Everything Is New the First Time Around

Young and irrepressible!

 

“It’s nothing but bullshit!” I yelled and suddenly I had the feeling I always got when I tried to explain the Dharma to people, Alvah, my mother, my relatives, girl friends, everybody, they never listened, they always wanted me to listen to them, they knew, I didn’t know anything, I was just a dumb kid and impractical fool who didn’t understand the serious significance of this very important, very real world.

-      Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

 

I can’t believe I’m finally reading Kerouac! Tried On the Road once, not that many years back, feeling that I had been neglecting my autodidactic education in American literature (something nearly unforgivable in a bookseller), but I just couldn’t stay with it. The early pages so completely bored me, and reading it felt like such a waste of time – and I know many people feel the same way about some of the books I not only love but re-read on a regular basis – that I shook my head and resigned myself to having that particular hole in my hit-and-miss bookish background. After all, no one has read everything. And it isn’t as if On the Road is fading into obscurity without my devotion: 3 million copies sold, still selling 60,000 a year, according to publisher Viking. Anyway, I’m doing better with The Dharma Bums (first published in 1958), which reminds me as I read of a few people I knew in the 1960s and beyond.

 

Jack Kerouac was 36 when he wrote this hymn to youth and freedom (he was dead by age 47), but Ray Smith, the first-person narrator of The Dharma Bums and stand-in for the author, seems to be in his early 20s, at most. It’s mind-bending to go, as I do, from the semifictional Ray Smith to diarist Silas Durand, 25 years old in 1855 – two such different individuals, two such different American eras: Jack bumming around California in the late 1950s, Silas soberly teaching school in the 1850s – but also mind-bending to recall myself in the second and third decade of my life, an era that now seems almost like a movie I saw long ago or a book I read several times when young but not at all in recent years. And what a blessing, I occasionally think, that fame was never mine then -- or now, of course. Fame (or infamy) must be a terrible burden at any age, but to be famous when young seems an almost insurmountable challenge. It’s a miracle that as many well-known young people survive being famous as do. Great wealth and privilege at an early age (any age?) has to be an equally great challenge, all the world being so new and intoxicating and all. 

 

Last evening we were reading quietly while waiting out a “severe” winter storm warning as the snow fell silently, so taking Peasy outdoors before bedtime was a surprise to me as well as to him! Then this morning there was more snow (five inches, one of my neighbors says), and it isn’t over yet. Snow is still falling, and the storm warning is in effect until 8 p.m.

Peaks hidden in snow clouds

Where did the mountains go?

Our little ghost town landscape is quite transformed. The mountaintops are hidden from sight, desert tree branches outlined in white, tracks of rabbits and birds and small rodents as clear as they would be back home in northern Michigan. And Peasy cannot get enough of it! Since we don’t know his age, we don’t know if he has ever seen snow before, but whether he has or not, it’s obvious that he finds it very exciting.

As for me, watching the snow from inside a warm, cozy cabin, I think what a perfect day this is to stay indoors. A perfect day for baking. Perfect for reading. Perfect for answering letters from friends and working on my Silas project. Oh, the warm indoor light! The quiet, contented tasks!

But of course a young dog cannot be expected to lie around indoors all day. He needs exercise. A lot of it. He throws his beloved lion up in the air and carries it from one end of the house to the other, but that just isn't enough.

Ha! I say Peasy “needs exercise,” but in his mind I’m sure it’s fun and excitement he craves. “Outside! Outside! Snow! Running! Finding treasures! Poking my nose down under the snow! Zoom, zoom, zoom! Fun, fun, fun!!!” 

 

Is his grip on reality more reasonable than mine? Is Peasy a dharma bum in canine form? Or is all dog nature dharma nature? Not at Peasy’s tender age, I’d say. Right now, in what definitely seems like canine adolescence, the excitement of the storm is overcoming Peasy’s tenuous grip on his dogly duties and right conduct. Come when called? Oh, Mom, you are so boring! Right now, today, Mr. P is all about fun and freedom! But I am patient. I can wait him out! And it does lift my heart to see his joy. Dog joy is one of life’s great gifts to human beings.

He jumps for joy, and my own heart leaps, too!

 

The Day We Let Ourselves Go

Andy at the wheel

“Leelanau UnCaged” was the theme of the recent street fair in Northport. After the event, I received an e-mail from an East Leland woman who said she and friends were curious about the connection between Northport and composer John Cage. It was so tempting to make up a story, all about how John Cage had once visited Northport – incognito, of course – and how the fair was named in his honor in memory of that visit, etc., etc. But while it is certainly possible that Cage came to Northport incognito, there is no evidence pointing in that direction. (Scotch the rumor!) As far as I know, the only connection between our village and Cage prior to Saturday, September 28, was in the brain of Andy Thomas, shown here at the wheel of one of his big Thomas & Milliken trucks, the one that opened up, all along the side, to become a sound stage for live music! That Andy! He and his wife, Gloria, are hard-working folks who are also full of ideas and energy and enthusiasm. Hence “Leelanau UnCaged.”

Setting up one of the temporary sound stages

Major downtown streets were closed and traffic rerouted from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. The route of the Homecoming parade had to take a major detour, but everyone agreed, post-event, that the change had been a good one. Northport’s Homecoming parade is usually a pretty small event, with only a few family members and locals watching the fire engines and floats go by, but this year, with so many people in town, the parade audience was the biggest ever.

There was art all over the place, indoors and out --

Inside Lelu 

Outside the Garage

Down at sidewalk level

At vendors' booths

Poet Fleda Brown

At Dog Ears Books, Fleda Brown came to give her first poetry reading in a year, and from his vantage point behind the counter, David was able to report to me later that I was not the only listener who had to brush away tears. Despite the title of Brown’s new collection, however, No Need of Sympathy, the poems are not about cancer or chemo but were written before the poet underwent that siege. It is poetry that has no need of sympathy. More about poetry, including that of Fleda brown, soon in another post.

Novelist Ken Wylie

Following Fleda's reading, we had another Michigan writer, Omena resident Ken Wylie, signing his recently released co-authored novel, Possessed. Ken's big smile here is because we sold out of all copies on hand. (We have restocked since then, and Ken has signed the newly arrived copies.)

Native dancers

From around the corner came the sound of drumming, and that made me happy. I’d missed pow-wow this last August, and here pow-wow had come to me – well, to Northport. At least some of it. Here are some dancers and drummers on break.

Dancers in regalia

Drummers with family and friends

Next, back on Waukazoo Street next, there was a woodwind quintet playing in front of Dog Ears Books. That was a rare treat and pulled in good crowds, too.

"Prevailing Winds of Leelanau" prevail! 

Then it was time for the crowds to surge through the building housing the bookstore to the temporary performance space cleared in the back. Crystal Bindi studios in Traverse City had come to demonstrate Middle Eastern belly-dancing. Another Northport first?

Belly dancing to a different tune

Music continued out on Nagonaba Street, where the community band formed up just east of the wood-fired pizza oven.

Pizza goes well with music.

Music continued after sunset, as a few of us tired veterans gathered over pizza and beer to exchange stories. All agreed to call the day a resounding success.

We were certainly fortunate in the weather (rain the week before, rain the week after, and perfectly clear skies for our Saturday), but mountains of credit must go to the instigators, the planners and organizers, the participants, and the crew of volunteers who made everything run smoothly and kept the fun quotient high.

Yea, Northport! A new local tradition is born!

Not Much Time for Commentary

"Take your dog to work day?" someone asked. After the work, we had a lot of fun.

This is obviously not our private playground any more.

Instead of dogs frolicking, there will be golfers soon.

I'd eaten quite a bit of chicken curry before realizing I hadn't taken its picture first,

but I got a photograph of David's refreshing rice noodle and shrimp sausage before too much of it was gone. This was the first evening of Thai food at Lelu Cafe.

This morning I captured spiderwort's blue better than the other day.

Many blossoms yet to come on this stem!

Time for beautiful lilies ...

... and the first raspberries are coming on, too.

I did not take my camera on yesterday afternoon's mini-vacation with Sarah. We were living in the moments, luxuriating in a refreshing pool created by a rushing creek emptying into a large lake. A mother duck and two ducklings kept their distance. Brilliant blue dragonflies were not bothered by our presence. I picked through small stones. Sarah stood around in water up to her belly, content to be cool.

Tonight Loreen Niewenhuis will be at the Leelanau Township Library in Northport, beginning her presentation at 7:30 p.m. Loreen has done two 1,000-mile walks, one around Lake Michigan and the second comprising different stretches of the five Great Lakes. On book tour now with her second book, she has also begun her third adventure, exploring Great Lakes islands. Most of the library series events are on Tuesdays, so a Thursday event is unusual, but it's when Loreen had time in her schedule. She is a lively, personable presenter. Catch her if you can!

In Which We Learn the Agony of Defeat

"We'll wake up again."

Cold weather returned, and the pretty little spring beauties and shy trout lilies closed up their petals and went back to sleep. My dreams Friday night kept me busy setting up a straw bale garden and even refinishing old farmhouse floors, and in the morning out came the winter jacket again to keep me warm in the woods with Sarah. 

Friday was the annual spelling competition on Friday afternoon at Gilbert Lodge on (one of the) Twin Lakes west of Traverse City, and once again Marilyn Zimmerman, Trudy Carpenter and I were the the bookstore team. Is it our sixth year? Marilyn and I were by ourselves the first time, and Trudy has been with us ever since.

Well, the Dog Ears Books team did not cover itself with glory this year at the Senior Spelling Bee. Perhaps, as one member remarked, we had become overconfident and needed a little reminder from Fate. Be that as it may, we went down in Round 7 when the three of us agreed to spell ‘vendible’ (the correct spelling) with an ‘a’ in the middle syllable. WRONG! Rather than stretch out the suspense, in case you’re wondering about a rule for –able and –ible words, here and here are links to the answer. We’ll know better next year. Of course, there are many exceptions to the so-called rules....

But oh, the words that appeared when the Bee Master went to his second box! Words no one present had ever encountered in a lifetime, and recall that contestants must be 55 years of age (or is it 50?) to participate! When one team went down on ‘exsert’ (it’s the opposite of ‘insert’), there were only two teams left of the seven who had begun, and when the Bee gets down to the last two teams the rules change. 

Bee Master Michael Sheehan and last two teams

If one team then misses a word, the other team must spell that word correctly and spell a second word correctly to validate their win. If the second team misses either word, it’s on to a new round. This Bee went 35 rounds, due to words such as these: farraginous, aichmophobia, rhonchial, zymurgy, ochlesis, obvallate, oneirodynia, sagittiform, roscid, agrestic, blennoid, and sybotic. How many of those do you think my spell-checking program accepts? It’s entirely possible I’ve made a mistake or two here, but I don’t think all but two are incorrect, as the program is telling me.

Bee Master consults with judges when a challenge is issued

In the end, the father-daughter team took first place this year, and they deserved to win. Second- and third-place teams also put up good, long fights. Maybe next year my friends and I will be back in the top three (where we've always been up to now), but we had a good time despite our loss, and as one team-member whose grandchildren come to watch her spell remarked in e-mail to me this morning, “I had the chance to show my grandchildren that grownups sometimes lose, and they can still go out for ice cream.”  An important lesson, I think we can all agree.

There was irony for me in the word that toppled us, as I have been reading William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, and had noticed his spelling of ‘vendible’ but had thought it must have changed since then. It hasn’t. But did you follow the links above? If you did (and even if you didn't), of the following, which spelling would you choose as correct –

COLLECTABLE

           or

COLLECTIBLE

-- and why?

Come to think of it, I probably got a much better night’s sleep refinishing floors in my dreams than going through another spelling bee. But if you take any little bit of wisdom away from today's blog post, let it be this:

“Grownups sometimes lose, and they can still go out for ice cream.” - Trudy Carpenter

Saturday morning fiddleheads

Another Very Challenging Contest Event

Gilbert Lodge, Twin Lakes Camp, Traverse City

I took this first picture and am including it primarily for my mother, Mrs. Gilbert. Not that our family has any connection to this lovely building. Coincidence, is all. But kind of fun, eh? Gilbert Lodge is the setting for Traverse City's annual Senior Spelling Bee, sponsored by Comfort Keepers. Entrants (who must be at least 55 years of age) pay five dollars each to participate and compete on teams of two or three members. We arrived in the rain, had a wonderful time, and emerged afterward into bright sunshine.

Laurie makes sure everyone is relaxed and has a good time. She makes us all laugh, sometimes at the expense of the good-natured Bee Master, Michael Sheehan. Here's Laurie introducing everyone on Friday, May 4.

Laurie

Besides being fun for the competitors, the Bee generates spending money for the Traverse City area school spelling champion on his or her trip to the national competition in Washington, D.C. That's where those entry fees go. This year's TC area contender in Washington will be Jack Pasche from Suttons Bay, and here he is with the giant check presented to him from the event sponsor, who has spread the Senior Spelling Bee idea--with connection to the national student contest--far and wide across the country:

Headed for the Nationals

This was a very tough Bee, especially after the Bee Master decided we all needed harder words, or we would be there all day. Dipping into the "more difficult" group, he came up with some doozies. Our team had to spell 'autochthonous' in Round 12, and we were given 'vichyssoise' for Round 13. By the time we got to Round 15, where another elimination left only two remaining teams, ours deliberated so long over the spelling of 'diptych,' and I, the pronouncer, was in such a tizzy over which syllable got the 'i' and which one got the 'y' that I left out one of the consonants! Fortunately for us, the other team misspelled that word, too, so we were still in the game. 'Imbroglio' gave us pause the next time around, but we did it justice. 'Ennui' was a snap. In Round 21, we looked to  the retired lawyer on our team for the correct spelling of 'rescission' after the other team had gotten it wrong, and Marilyn didn't let us down. Our confirming word, the one we had to spell correctly to cement our win, gave us fits: 'eucrasia' was the challenge. We got it! Oh, and did I mention (no, but I will now) that another word earlier in the Bee was 'echidna,' an Australian mammal? Luckily, my teammates had seen this animal recently on the Discovery Channel! For the entire list of words in this year's Bee, see Michael Sheehan's blog post on Wordmall.

Liz, Donna, and Martha

This year's third-place winners were a team always in the top three, with whom we have traded the Bee back and forth several times. Liz Bannister, on the left, 95 years old, is a spelling champion of many years. These ladies are tough competition and great sports!

Kay and Ann

The team coming in second kept us hopping for seven rounds, back and forth, back and forth. They are crack spellers, too. This was their second Bee.

Trudy, Marilyn, sponsor, bee master, and me

And here's my Dog Ears Books team, competing for the sixth consecutive year. Trudy Carpenter, Marilyn Zimmerman and I keep each other on our toes, and we enjoy our annual expedition from Northport to Twin Lakes. There was a team all the way from Antrim County on Friday, so obviously word is getting around. Gerry, doesn't that make you want to get a team together for next year? Road trip, road trip!