As August Slip-Slides Away

Note for 2027: More phlox!

Blooming early or late or repeatedly?

I did not start life as a bookseller until until I was 45 years old, Tree Guy was 41 before he “found himself” as an arborist, and several friends of mine have now published first novels after retiring from life-long careers, so I have to smile at a little book by Brendan Gill called Late Bloomers. It is encouraging to turn the pages and see how many other men and women can legitimately be called “late bloomers.” Artists, composers, writers, scientists, and more. One wonders what answers they give when asked in grade school what they wanted to be when they grew up. 

Book cover

Some late bloomers knew all along what they were destined to do with their lives. 

One of the most agreeable forms of blooming late is to have bloomed early without the knowledge of the world beyond one’s doorstep and then, on being discovered in old age, to find the world crowding that doorstep and singing one’s praises.

That is the paragraph introducing the reader to photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, though Julia Child’s discovery of French cooking is more in line with what we usually think of as a late bloomer’s blossoming. It is a friendly little book, each biographical sketch only a page long, with a photograph of the bloomer on the page opposite. And what a cast of characters!

List of book's "late bloomers"

At this time of year, however, I can’t even think the words ‘bloom’ and ‘blossom’ and such without thinking of wildflowers and gardens. The little grey-headed coneflower is one of my favorite native meadow flowers, and I’m pleased to see it appearing in more and more yards and fields, as well as noticing it spreading to new areas in my meadow. 

At home on the porch

In front of Northport Area Heritage Association building

Daylilies take their name from the all-too-short length of their blossoms, but for the single day that each flower blooms it is glorious!

One of my favorite annuals for three or four years now is bacopa, which seems to go through at least three periods of flowering throughout the season. I didn’t used to care much for snapdragons—until I realized how extraordinarily hardy they are: Two pots from last year survived on my unheated porch all winter, without watering, and came back to life this spring, blooming all summer long. Then there was this year’s exciting discovery of the black petunia! Wow! Not a big petunia fan in general, I am in love with the black ones and the way they set off green plants without flowers of their own. 

Counterclockwise from lower left:
Bacopa, rose, black petunia, ivy, blue salvia

Summer is too short! It flies by too fast!

Back from a quick overnight to the U.P., we plunged into laundry and yard work, and I had one of my these-days-rare author events on Thursday afternoon with Jennifer Sager. Naturally, I would have liked three times as many people in attendance, but those who were here had a very good time. Jenny read, people asked questions, and the room rang with many bursts of laughter, always a sign that people are enjoying themselves at a book event.

Monday following U.P. and author event, Sunny and I got back for another session with Coach Mike, only our third this season. We had done well the first time, but I was very muddled in our second session. This past Monday we were on top of our game! My sisters had arrived on Saturday afternoon and stayed until Tuesday morning but didn’t get to see the agility teamwork, as they were on vacation and not getting up early (and who can blame them?). 

What did sisters and Tree Guy and Naughty Barker do together? There were lots of meals, of course, and lots of tennis ball throwing. We humans also made a visit to Good Harbor beach (my first Lake Michigan day of the season!), and on Monday, with perfect temperatures and a sweet little breeze, the sisters made a brief stop at Tandem Ciders, just long enough to taste three ciders and come home with a bottle of Smackintosh to go with our porch supper. Tree Guy pronounced the three sisters “Amazing!” Aw, shucks!

A handful of links, given with as little comment as I can manage:

If you do not regularly read Robert Reich's substack, please take the time to read this one. Do it for me!

Adam Kinzinger is someone I follow daily. Here's what he had to say about the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Another Kinzinger post, this one reminding all of us that we can be brave and what it takes.

I read this morning that SCOTUS has “halted the pause”--or was it “paused the halt”?--on the new ballroom for the White House. If only I could include a friend's response here! But I'm afraid my blog would explode. As for my response, I can only hope that there will soon be a suspension of the halt to the pause (or pause to the halt).

Need a change of pace? Here's an esoteric bit from the literary corner, something about a children's series author whose name is completely unfamiliar to you. Or should I not assume?

Heads Up for October

Michigan author Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Q Road, Once Upon a River, The Waters, as well as several volumes of short fiction, will be in Northport on Thursday, October 30, at 4 p.m. (MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW!) with her new novel, The Spirits, a contemporary Christmas Carol billed by her publisher (Norton) as "a tale of love, transgression, and the miraculous healing power of the holiday table.” I do wish I could have Charles Dickens here on that day to meet Bonnie Jo Campbell, as I’m pretty sure they would have a lot to say to each other—and what a lively conversation that would be for the rest of us to hear!

BJC has written a Christmas story!!!

Taking a Short Break

Besides my usual Sunday-Monday closure, my shop will also be closed Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, as Tree Guy, Naughty Barker, and I make another dash to the U.P., this one for three nights instead of only one. I’ll be back in the shop on Thursday, 27, and then no more absences until maybe the second or third week of September. I’ll let you know. At least one reader of my blog has requested a “travel” post, though, and you know I have to leave home to produce such a thing.

"Will I have to be a good girl in the car?"
"Yes, Sunny, you will."

But yes, I shall return, because we are nowhere near the last rose of summer yet! And when I come back, I will have a new book to share!

Back For the Holiday

 

Welcome to Hell!!!

Since my last post, I have been through Hell. Literally. The little stop in the road in southeast Michigan, that is, on what was a purely delightful road trip down to Vicksburg and Kalamazoo, over to Ann Arbor, and north through the Pinckney area. But let's backtrack a bit. 

My companion on the trail, Tree Guy, had a medical appointment in Ann Arbor that served as our excuse for the trip. I drove the first stretch, taking my one of my old favorite two-lane roads, M-37, which allowed a pause in Newaygo at the River Stop Cafe.

River Stop Cafe, Newaygo

Good place to take a break

River Stop hasn't changed its look since my last visit, but they now have menus and table service, even to the outdoor tables. (We sat at the back table inside.) Sadly, the bookstore I visited last spring was no longer in operation, and a nearby business that had some used books was not yet open, but we admired a couple of giant sycamores that made the stop memorable.

Giant sycamore in Newaygo, Michigan

Tree Guy had friends in Vicksburg we could stay with for two nights, and then a friend of mine in Ann Arbor invited us for our third night away from home, so we were all set. We were extremely lucky with the weather, too. We dodged all downpours, possible tornadoes did not materialize, and though many trees had come down in high winds, none fell on us or on the homes of our hosts. Sunrise the day after our arrival in Vicksburg was over a lovely pond, a pond large enough to hold an island, a dock, and a couple of pontoon boats.

On the other side of the island live the family's momma pig and her little ones. I did not venture too close, as the quick, unpredictable movements of pigs make me nervous, so none of my pig photos are going to win any prizes, but if you look closely you can see them. The momma weighs 600 lbs. Reason not to get too close! 

Look closely to see the pigs.

There were many other animals I didn't mind approaching. I missed Sunny, so dogs Miles and Louie kept me on an even keel.

There were also ducks and geese and hens and chicks and even duck eggs incubating in the guest bathroom. 

Ducks

Hens

Young poultry

On our one full day in Kalamazoo County, we were able to see grandson Jack's show at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, paintings done during his past year's residency there. Jack, as well as my son, Ian, met us at the KIA for a tour of the show.

Self-portrait by artist Jackson Willits

It was impossible to see all friends and family members in a single day, although I managed phone conversations with a couple more, and then we were off to Ann Arbor, Tree Guy at the wheel on I-94 and around that fascinating but (to me) very confusing town. It was a relief to get the medical appointment behind (after three hours at the clinic, mostly waiting for the doctor) and relax with delicious take-out Moroccan food at the home of a dear friend I've known since our kids were in grade school together.

The next morning we drove through Hell and stopped for a brief visit with my former Arizona hiking partner, who now lives in southeast Michigan after 20 years in the Cochise County ghost town where we met and spent so much time together with our dogs. We missed the excitement of the Memorial Day weekend in Hell by going through on Thursday, but that was fine with me. One of the reasons I love rural two-lane roads is that they are generally quiet. We did not visit the Hell Saloon. Stopped for photo opp and continued on our way.

Because the shop in Newaygo was closed and time did not permit exploring Ann Arbor, I did not visit a single bookstore on this road trip, and yet I came home with my car loaded with books--backseat and way-back full!--thanks to friends who remodeled their home and thanks to my son who been storing their de-acquisitioned personal library items for me.  I did some reading on the trip, too, finishing up a Charles Baxter novel, First Light, interesting in its structure, as the story begins at the end and goes backward, step by step, to the beginning of the brother-sister relationship. That might not sound like a novel with a satisfying finish, but I appreciated it more and more as it went along, and closed it with a sigh of satisfaction. And now I'm halfway through Gerald Green's To Brooklyn With Love and enjoying the writing immensely.

Back home in Northport shop, with my newly organized section of Michigan used books (among many other treasures), I was happy to have done the reorganization before the busy weekend.

Used Michigan books, on table and on shelves

Books and dogs: That's my life. So here are the friendly Vicksburg dogs again, one more time. Miles and his antler reminded me of Sunny with the deer legs (bones) she brings home, and Louie, a tidy little Lab-beagle mix, had a head that put me in mind of James Thurber's dog cartoons. Both were very sweet, laid-back company.

Miles

Louie

And what, you may wonder, was Sunny Juliet doing while her momma was away from home for four days? No cold, lonely kennel time for my girl! She had the constant companionship of her Auntie Deborah, who spoiled her rotten with attention and tennis ball play. Sunny is a lucky, lucky dog!

HAVE A SAFE MEMORIAL DAY!!!

Changing Moods of Northern Michigan

One rainy morning on Waukazoo Street

 

The season is dragging its feet, but the rocket took off.

Spring break? I didn’t take one. A lingering cough and less-than-optimal driving weather put the kibosh on travel plans. There were a few highlights in the week, however, including birthday dinner at a friend’s house, where we watched the launch of Artemis II together. 

Moon launch! Following the crew of Artemis II these past few days has been good medicine for me, a cheery antidote to the insanity of you-know-who and you-know-what.

As a devoted earthling who has never had the slightest desire to travel in outer space, I’ve never been a big fan of the space program, but Wednesday evening’s launch warmed my heart. Here’s what I loved most about it: Everyone involved was calm, competent, skilled, intelligent, knowledgeable, dedicated, modest, and grateful to be part of a team effort years in the making. What a breath of fresh air in today’s world! And one of the four astronauts, 47-year-old Christina Koch, is from Michigan! 

Thanks to the Artemis II mission, we have already learned to call the side of the moon facing away from earth the “far" side, rather than the “dark” side. Makes me think of Gary Larson’s cartoons. Here are some Larson takes on space travel.

Much, much closer to home than 250,000 miles, spring plants whose flowering was set back by two feet of March snow are preparing once again for their postponed season opening. Winter aconites, snowdrops, and hellebore seem as eager to blossom as I am to see the blossoms. Even buds of small branches torn from big trees—little detached limbs!—want to participate.

Reminders of my friend Chris, who gave me the first ones

Need to plant more of these in the fall

Still crumpled from their sleep under the snow

Life force!

Participating in democracy is heartwarming.

The March 28 “No Kings” gatherings across the country were once again peaceful and full of joy. Recovering from one of my life’s worst colds, I didn’t think I could handle a big Traverse City crowd but made a sign and went to join demonstrators in Suttons Bay. The thought I had that morning was that I was not only demonstrating for those whose views I share but for all Americans, not only for my own future and that of my children and grandchildren but for the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of all Americans to the seventh generation—at least! 

It was good to see demonstrators carrying American flags. We were out there on a chilly morning because we love our country!

I wanted a larger, clearer sign on March 28 than the one I’d held earlier in Northport when I joined “the stalwarts” (as I call them) for a couple Thursdays on the corner south of my bookstore. My solution was to take a large trifold pasteboard I’d put together for the Artist’s memorial gathering in Leland and tape it closed, using what had been the back of the trifold for the front of my sign. No one else knew, but I liked knowing that the Artist and my family and friends were with me inside that sign.

My reading is random, as usual.

“On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also, I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize."

- Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991)

Barker’s historical novel, Regeneration, takes place during World War I and opens with poet Siegfried Sassoon's letter protesting the war’s continuance. Taken to be suffering from shell shock, he is sent to a hospital for treatment rather than being court-martialed, and in the hospital he, the historical character, and we, the readers, meet other soldiers sent home from the front and gradually learn their stories. One of the others is young Wilfred Owen, another English poet, killed when he returned to action, age 25, a week before the war's end. (Sassoon lived through the war and died at the age of 80.) The character whose thoughts we follow most intimately is the doctor in charge of Sassoon’s case. 

But it was that letter on the first page of the novel that grabbed my attention like a fire engine siren, with the phrases “callous complacence,” “agonies which they do not share,” and “have not sufficient imagination to realize.” Isn’t that the case with the present war begun by our own country? Except that the sufferers today are, for the most part, not our country's military but civilians (including children) of the country our president wants to bomb “back to the Stone Age.”

***

Shifting gears here--On an Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes, edited by Michael Welch, is a  collection of nonfiction and poetry by 33 different writers living in the U.S. and Canada on one or another of the Great Lakes. The publishing house, Belt Publishing, is new to me, and none of the writers in the book had names I recognized. An interview on Interlochen Public Radio with one of the writers (Sara Maurer, “What Are Yoopers Without Winter?”) brought the volume to my attention and led me to order it, and I am so grateful to IPR for the connection! I’ve been skipping around in the volume, opening at random and reading wherever the book opens, and everything I’ve read has been excellent. Not just good but excellent, and I am eager to get this book into my bookstore customers’ hands.

Slowly, the season to come is taking shape.

Dog Ears Books will celebrate Indie Bookstore Day on Saturday, April 25, with a poetry reading by Fleda Brown at noon. This will be Fleda's fourth appearance in Northport, so it's safe to say there is mutual affection. Mark your calendar now!

May will be a quiet month, without any special events, as I have several special events in my personal life that month. 

On Thursday, June 11, at 4 p.m., our bookstore guest will be Robert Downes, doing a slide show presentation on the arrival of Europeans in North America and what that meant for indigenous cultures, along with a signing of his new book, Sun Dog: A Novel of Native America. 

***

Arrivals and Departures (because I couldn’t think of any appropriate title)

My constant companion, here all along!

 

Fall Hours? Don’t Ask!

 

I thought I had fall bookshop hours figured out, but now I just don’t know. I’ll be here Tuesdays through Saturdays whenever I can get here, until 4 p.m. if possible, but you might want to call first if you’re making a long drive solely to visit Dog Ears Books. So let's say,

Tuesday, 11-3

Wednesday-Friday, 11-4

Saturday, 11-5

CIRCUMSTANCES PERMITTING!

And truly, if we're being honest with ourselves, isn't this all we can ever say about where we'll be at any particular time? “CIRCUMSTANCES PERMITTING!”?

 

 

My Recent Reading

 

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a “Books Read” list, so I’ll do that in the near future, someday soon when it’s time to get something new here on the blog and other inspiration fails. Back early in the summer, overwhelmed by a number of aspects of life in our 21st century world, I binged a private detective series, The Sanibel Island Detective, by Ron Base. More recently, looking for a multibook getaway, I took home the Rabbi Small books that had been sitting on my mystery shelf for far too long, waiting to be discovered—not that I hadn’t mentioned those Harry Kemelman titles to browsers, adding that they were some of my favorites, but no one took up the recommendation. Fine! I re-read all four books with pleasure!

Having loved This Is Happiness, by Niall Williams, I’m now reading another novel set in the same rainy Irish village, The Year of the Child. Our Leelanau weather this post-Labor Day week is appropriate to reading of life in Faha: wild and woolly, windy and wet. I would find it difficult to live in such a consistently rainy part of the world, but I love the slow, loving, detailed descriptions Williams gives of his characters and their homes and relationships and interactions. 

 

Readers looking for fast-paced action need to look elsewhere than in the pages of Niall Williams’s novels. His belong to a category I call “slow books,” the kind you sink into and wrap yourself up in, coming to view his characters as old friends. Also, if you are an impressionable kind of reader, you’ll want to have plenty of tea on hand (in the village of Faha they brew it dark and strong), although I’ve been making do with hot cocoa these chilly, windy, rainy September evenings.

Wet, windy, wild and woolly September!

(And yes, here in my bookshop, customers must bear with my listening, once again, to Rosanne and Johnny Cash singing “September When It Comes,” a haunting song that moves me almost to tears. And yes, I have linked it in previous years.)

 

 

My Suspicious Mind

 

We all have our suspicions, don’t we? Especially when it comes to the thinking of those with whom we disagree. Some proponents of gun rights have actually claimed, publicly, that liberals are happy when there is another school shooting incident, because they see it as strengthening the argument for stricter gun control! How could anyone believe and say such an outrageous thing, that anyone could be happy to have schoolchildren terrorized and killed? And yet, people who say they love “freedom” so much have said such vile things against proponents of stricter gun control. I would search for an example to provide here but would rather keep my blood pressure in a safe range.

 

The NRA claims that “gun control doesn’t work” (and when you've read that article, you’ll want to read about the NRA and guns in Ryan Busse’s book Gunfight: My Battle against the Industry that Radicalized America), but clearly they are using a different set of data than that cited by the editors of Scientific American, who say “The science is clear: Gun control saves lives.” I won’t give a long list of links here, but do a search yourself for “gun control arguments” and see what turns up. 

 

The gun issue, though, is tangential to my most recent suspicion, so I’ll leave you to make a connection if you see one. What I’m thinking these days is another school issue--the state of Florida’s plan to end mandatory vaccinations. I won’t comment on the ridiculous parallel between mandatory vaccination and slavery! I mean, really, people! What does strike me is the likelihood that more families may decide to keep their children out of public schools for fear of infectious diseases, and if that happens, shrinking enrollment would shrink school faculty and support staff and possibly close some schools—and isn’t that just what the privatize-everything people would love to see happen? Another thought: those who count on creating an ignorant electorate would be overjoyed to see American public education destroyed!

 

My Parallel Lives

How many lives do each of us live at one time, and how many of them do we share with others? 

 

I have, obviously, what you might call my mundane life—the everyday, ordinary, recurring circle of days that each of us has. Much, though not all, of my mundane life is public, since I am not retired but still work in my retail bookshop for a living, and so I go most days to that bookshop in the village of Northport, Michigan, where I regularly meet year-round locals, seasonal residents, visitors from other parts of Michigan, and travelers far from home. I also meet authors of books, some established and some just starting out, and that's always interesting. And then there are also the insatiably curious. For instance, I am often asked, “Where do you get all your books?” and I tell people the truth. “They come to me.” After 32 years in business, people know I am here, and they think of me when  pruning their home libraries and/or rehoming inherited volumes. 

Clean and desirable, worthy of shelf space

My place of business is also a place of personal friendships and meaningful conversations, and it includes too the frequent indulgence of a latte from the New Bohemian Café, as well as walks to the post office, library, bank, and grocery store, and so in all these ways, although I have lost my beloved life partner and although I work in a small village, I am far from isolated, and in that I am most fortunate.

But then I have, as do we all, a less public mundane life in which I maintain my home and land, work and play with my dog, and face the challenges of widowhood and aging, along with all manner of smaller challenges that come with the materiality and machinery of existence, but in this, too, other people come in and out of the scene, thank heaven! I text daily with sisters and friends, put notes and letters in the mail and rejoice to find notes and letters in my own post office box, occasionally share a meal with someone, and generally draw comfort from my little circle as we trade recipes and laughter and stories of our small personal worries and triumphs along with larger, global concerns, serve as listeners or advisors to each other when needed, and in general bolster one another’s morale. “O, who would inhabit this bleak world alone?” 

 

Living, we spin webs of connection.

In my less public mundane life I follow gruesome political news, write letters, and take my small stands with like-minded others. And so the life of the mind, as it is often called, obviously overlaps the mundane, or at least it does for me. Political (as well as literary) concerns are essential to my work and to most of my relationships, and yet these are also part of my private, solitary life, the life I wake to in the dark. It may seem paradoxical to call political concerns private rather than public—and as I say, the private and public do overlap in the life of the mind—but those middle-of-the-night wakings, when I remember once more, all over again, with a shock, that the nightmare of American political life is reality, not merely a bad dream, then although I know I am far from alone in such awakenings to dread, I feel most alone. What do others do? What I do is reach for a book. Because what else can I do in the middle of the night except try to calm my soul and return to sleep?

I remember all too well the night of September 11-12, 2001. The Artist and I lay awake in the dark, listening to the radio, taking what comfort we could in each other's presence as our minds wrestled to understand what had happened and worried about what would follow. Then sometime in the dark of morning, long before sunrise, he got up and began moving about. “What are you doing?" I asked. “Packing,” he said. “I think we should go to Grand Marais.” It was what we had planned to do on September 12, but the events of the 11th had left us shaken and unsure. 

That was the first time I ever crossed the Straits of Mackinac without my heart lifting, but we took up residence in Room 11 of the old lumberjack hotel and a day or two later joined the community in a memorial service in the tiny little Lutheran church, and it felt right to be there. Together.

 

The name of the rose continues to signify.

Now in sleep occurs my most private, most solitary life, the unsharable life of dreams. In the best of them I am reunited with the love of my life, and then it matters not what we are “doing” in any dream sequence, because whatever we are doing or talking about, whoever else might be in the scene, wherever it takes place, what matters is that we are together again, I see him again, talk to him, hear his voice, and I wake very reluctantly from the most ordinary dream scenes to a world from which the Artist has departed.

 

Obviously, all these strands I have called “parallel” are not separate (and so not really parallel at all) but braided together, some strands visible to others, friends or strangers, some shared only with those closest to me, and the dreams my purely private life that no one else living can share.

 

My Home Comforts

 

Ambition in the kitchen has taken a back seat in the September slow-down. Although I still have berries in the freezer, so eventually more jam must be made, there is no urgency, and I didn’t buy a large enough quantity of peaches to warrant canning, only enough to enjoy with yogurt and blueberries and then, with the last few, in a small rustic fresh peach tart. So there we were on the porch again, I with my peach tart and hot cocoa and Niall Williams novel, Sunny Juliet with a fresh beef bone, rain beating a tattoo on the metal roof. I must say, life was pretty cozy at home that evening, despite raging insanity in the world at large. Whatever comes in the future of my small life or the large, crazy world, I am right now a lucky woman.