Now, if ever, come perfect days.

Weeds have their place in my landscaping.

As it always does, June is racing by, and our northern Michigan world is a flowering chorus. Can’t you hear these hawkweed and lobelia singing? Lilacs are spent, poppies dropping their petals, but the show goes on and on and on, succeeding blooms arriving on cue to fill the stage with song. Hawkweeds are a special favorite of mine, both the dandelion yellow and the lollipop orange colors.

A volunteer rose made itself at home in my small shade garden, and I let it be for a while, but at last it had to move, as it was blocking from sight the more appropriate shade garden inhabitants. And a rose, anyway, needs sun. So on Tuesday evening I dug it up, replanted it in a border, pruned it back, and tucked a couple of cuttings into what I think of as my “nursery,” where this summer I hope viburnum and lilac cuttings in vermiculite will also take root. 

Before, with volunteer rose hogging the stage --

After, with evening light reaching everyone --

and finally, rose in its own new location. There!

As always, I am digging into books, too, though my reading progress slows when summer arrives. Whereas in winter I can get through three books a week, now in June, with so many customers in my shop (not a complaint!) and so much work to do outdoors at home (I love that, too!), it can take a week for me to read a single novel, so you can imagine how long it may take me to get through a serious book of history, even one as brilliantly written and engrossing as John Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. 

Barry tells a compelling story: that of the 17th century’s search for a balance between government and religion. The ascent of King James, son of Mary Queen of Scots, to the English throne in 1603, made a lot of people nervous. Would he lead them away from Calvin and back to Rome? But James was more concerned with his own power than with that of any religious group: The “divine right of kings” was his own pet theory. Kings are gods, claimed King James, in that they can “make and unmake their subjects, …have power of raising and casting down, of life and death, of judges over all their subjects of all causes, and yet accountable to none but God only…,” and so to question or rebel against a king was to rebel against God! The problem for James was English common law, which had long established property rights for Englishmen. Thus, the law and the king were in conflict! Interesting, no? And yet, how many times did Parliament roll over to placate the king? You can see why the 17th century is still relevant for Americans today.

I finished the second of my Jean-Luc Bannalec policiers as recent bedtime reading. Quoi qu’il en soit.... I translate that as “Whatever!” Bannalec’s characters say that or a variation of it all the time. 

Now my bedtime book is a slow meander down the shores and lakes of the Mississippi River with Virginia S. Eifert’s River World: Life of the Mississippi. Her piling on of adjectives in the Introduction made me wary, but I relaxed into the first and second chapters as she described the spring breakup of ice and the first birds and frogs and green plants arriving and appearing for another season of life and growth. The Upper Mississippi, after all, is much like northern Michigan, so I felt right at home, especially in the section on ground pines, which called up for me memories of walks with friends in the dunes near home, the place I remember seeing these little plants and knowing what they were for the first time.

The ground pines or club mosses, those miniature evergreen “trees” which are more closely related to the ferns than to anything else, standing nobly a few inches tall, are plants of ancient design and incredible endurance. Each year they faithfully bear thin, spore-filled, primitive cones on the tips of their stalks. 

They have been doing this since the Carboniferous period some 250 million years ago when the Lepidodendron trees reached their greatest size and variety. They were giants as they grew in the ancient coal swamps and prehistoric forests of the world….

- Virginia S. Eifert, River World: Life of the Mississippi (1959)

The ground pines are part of what Eifert calls the “Canadian carpet,” and here the term Canadian refers to C. Hart Merriam’s life zones, which I first learned about far from the Mississippi, out in southern Arizona, where one can ascend through life zones not by traveling north but simply by climbing a mountain. In the West (where I think Merriam came up with his categories), it is elevation rather than latitude that determines a biome.

Eifert’s book (with illustrations by the author—always a plus in my eyes) was written and published well over half a century ago. How different is that same river world today? Am I reading of a world that was, or one that still is? That I can recognize the Canadian carpet from her description and place it here in my own Leelanau County gives me hope that the river world the author described in 1959 still lives on, if only in certain stretches of the river’s length.

I pause briefly over “250 million years ago” and think of the difference between that and the mere 250 years that our country has been in existence. Our country’s age times a million—that’s the age of club mosses, and yet how many of us give a thought to their existence? Did you even know of them? What will the universe look like 250 millions years from now? Will there be anyone then to give a thought to us?

St. Johnswort

We’ve had a cool stretch of sunny days in Leelanau, perfect for making hay. Today is the Feast of St. John. Last night, on St. John’s Eve, I saw the first bloom of St. Johnswort. Cool weather must have slowed it down, or there would be more in flower by now. Meanwhile, coreopsis, which I associate with the Longest Day, was going gangbusters long before the solstice. 

Coreopsis

One tragic note this June is the extreme heat in Europe, casting a pall (in the form of a heat dome) over summer festivals such as Faites de la Musique, or Fête de la Music, which in Paris took the place of the old St. John’s bonfires back in the late 1980s. (In 1987, St. John’s Eve was in full swing; after that, music took the stage in place of the traditional bonfires. I had mixed feelings about the change, but Quoi qu’il en soit!) Celebrating music or a saint or national history is joyful. Celebration is joyful! People dying of heat is not at all a cause to celebrate, and finding relief from deadly heat in a city like Paris is difficult, to say the least. Fountains will be teeming with microbes, and in an apartment without air conditioning (or anywhere else), there is a limit to how many clothes a person can remove: skin stays on! I was there one summer in the early 1990s, my head wrapped in a dripping, water-soaked towel, and the maddening heat made me want to scream! Although I guess wanting to scream was a good sign I was not on the brink of death, so I pray for those in Europe who have gone beyond screaming.

Beautiful Sunday clouds. Today (Wednesday), rain?

Sunday was a day to make hay.

My Michigan life did not slow down with cool weather. Far from it! Mowing, planting, pruning, weeding, watering—I’m not making hay myself (not literally, anyway), and yet the pace of summer can sometimes be daunting, and I remind myself to stop and take a deep breath and employ my mantra: I’m here now. I’m here now. 

Sunny reminds me that she’s here, too, and ready for action! Enough with the books and gardens! Time to play, Momma!

Momma's girl!

Searching for Sunshine

Briefly, sun broke through!

So far we have had two sunny days in January. On Wednesday a weak winter sun appeared in the morning sky, brightened with time, but by early afternoon sunshine had been replaced by familiar cloud cover and falling snow, so I’m not counting that as a third sunny day. A day must be bright for at least four hours to qualify as a sunny one, and I think counting a mere four hours as a day is generous, don’t you?

Beautiful -- but not a sunny day

Monday was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Reading the biography by Jonathan Eig at the beginning of 2025 gave me a better idea of the complexity and also the dedication of King’s character. When I looked at MLK quotes on Monday morning, this one stood out, given the times in which we live: 

 

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there ‘is’ such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.

 

-      Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

These days I am finding myself more troubled by the complacency of some than by the despair of others. Despair I can understand, but how can anyone not realize the “fierce urgency of now”? At the same time, the “vigorous and positive action” we need to take can be difficult to identify, so I appreciated suggestions last week from Robert Reich and value the “action items” a friend includes in her frequent “enCOURAGEment” emails.

 

A gathering in Suttons Bay last week provided metaphorical sunshine, demonstrating that people far from harm’s way care about those caught in the crossfires and want to see the federal government’s policies and actions return to the rule of law.

 

Catalog cover is book's cover illustration.

Another, different ray of sunshine came with the Spring/Summer 2026 Wayne State University Press book catalog. Right there on the cover, and again on the inside first page, is Black Summers: Growing Up in the Urban Outdoors, a collection of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and comics, all exploring joyful memories of growing up Black in a city and edited by Desiree Cooper. Three cheers! I look forward to the April release of this book so I can offer it to my customers in Northport.

More information inside catalog

There are occasional days of sunshine in the direst of winters and moments, even hours, of joy to be celebrated every day.

 

Far From Home

Recently I chose an autobiography written in 1937 for my bedtime reading, that of Isobel Field, stepdaughter of Robert Louis Stevenson. This Life I’ve Loved is interesting all the way through, right from the beginning, but when her mother, Fanny Osborne, married for love the sickly RLS (with no idea that he was going to become famous), something magical happened. Newlywed Fanny and Louis, as he is called in the book, went on a wedding trip to “Silverado,” a deserted mine in Napa Valley, where the hot, dry climate was expected to—and did—improve Louis’s frail health, and after a while the rest of the family joined them.

 

We had some very pleasant times together before they left [for Scotland], and I remember coming through the hall, and stopping suddenly at a light joyous sound. With a catch in my heart, I realized it was the first time I had ever heard my mother laugh.

 

-      Isobel Field, This Life I’ve Loved

 

Isobel, called Belle, was herself a married woman and mother by this time and had never before heard her mother laugh! Can you imagine that? The power of love! Note: It takes a while in the Youtube video to get to the song, but don't miss it! A great rock hit from the Michael J. Fox movie, “Back to the Future.”

 

The story continues in Hawaii and eventually Samoa, where the Stevensons bought land, built a house, and Fanny began all manner of agricultural and horticultural projects while Louis devoted himself to writing. Such a different world from Up North winter!

 

The perfume of Samoa reached us while the island was still a hazy cloud on the horizon, a blend of ylang-ylang blossoms, wood-smoke and copra. We stood by the rail of the little inter-island steamer Lübeck watching Upolu take shape before us; thickly wooded, lettuce-green hills piled up against a blue sky. Along the beach, a row of small shops faced the sea, half hidden by the foliage of trees and shrubs. Lying on the reef and towering out of the water were the hulks of three men-of-war, tragic reminders of the great hurricane that had cost so many lives the year before.

 

There was no wharf and only a few boats came out to meet us. The natives had not yet learned to barter their seed necklaces and tortoise-shell work, or dive for coins. Several outrigger canoes paddled about the ship, filled with brown men and girls garlanded in wreaths and flowers….

 

Field notes that while many Hawaiians at that time had already adopted European dress, Samoan men and women still wore the lava lava. It was the late 1800s, before the coming of world war, when Hawaii was still an independent kingdom, although the missionary faction was eager for it to be taken over by the United States. Samoa, already being governed by Germany, Britain, and the U.S., seemed to be holding more tightly to its island culture, but in neither place were there anything like the big American multistory hotels that have since made their way to the South Pacific. When Isobel leaves Hawaii for Sydney, Australia, prior to making the move to Samoa at Louis’s request (realizing his health will never permit a return to his native Scotland, he wants his family together in one place), she describes the islands where she felt so long at home.

 

…I leaned on the rail looking at the town before me. Flooded with moonlight, it was bright against the dark blue hills. Here and there roofs showed above the tree-tops, no one building rising high enough to spoil the symmetry. From the shrouded mystery of Diamond Head to the purple shadows of Waianai the city never looked more beautiful.

 

I thought that I was seeing it for the last time. In a sense I was, for a phase of my life ended then, utterly unlike anything that went before or came after.

 

Honolulu, so peaceful, so beautiful, was to suffer tragedy and blood-shed, and change into a bustling American city before I saw it again; the dignity, the romance, the charm of an island kingdom gone forever.

  

The United States of America annexed Hawaii in 1898, following what the American president himself acknowledged as an illegal invasion by U.S. Marines in 1893 supporting a local insurgency. There had been factions in Hawaii at least as long as Europeans and Americans had been accumulating Hawaiian land (often by marrying into landed Hawaiian families), a complicated history certainly not taught in my grade school when Hawaii became the 50^th state in 1959.

 

(What today of Greenland? Is there a lesson in the history of Hawaii for Greenlanders? For Venezuelans?)

 

As for me here in northern Michigan, Isobel Field’s stories of her stepfather have whetted my appetite for the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the next book I have now begun An Inland Voyage. In the preface by his widow, she writes,

 

Like Branwell Brontë, of whom he could never speak without emotion, [Stevenson] would sit poring over maps, making imaginary journeys. 

 

-      F.V. de G.S. [Don’t ask me what these letters stand for, other than the ‘F’ for Fanny!]

 

Just so, as a lover of maps and of armchair travel, I anticipate sunny hours ahead in Europe with RLS as I turn pages and journey with him in my imagination. 

 

In his Samoan compound, where evening prayers were part of daily life, writer Robert Louis Stevenson soon tired of formulaic recitations and began writing his own prayers. Here is the last one he wrote, the day before he died: 

 

When the day returns, call us up with morning faces and with morning hearts, eager to labor, happy, if happiness be our portion, and if the day be marked for sorrow, strong to endure it.

 

Really, what more can we ask?

Goodbye, November. Hello, Winter!

Holiday greenery at home

The Sunday after Thanksgiving came with more snow than I had expected. We’d had so little with the predicted big storm on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by continued clear roads on Friday and Saturday, that I had grown complacent, and even when snow began falling and blowing on Saturday evening, I didn’t expect enough accumulation to to get in the way of a visit to the dog park. 

 

I was wrong. 

That’s okay. Sunny and I walked in deep snow close to home, which she found exciting, and then came indoors where I began a project for the day: turkey soup. We live a revisable life, my dog and I, with much improvisation amid the constants.

 

Soup begins here.

It was the last day of November. Hanukkah will begin at sundown on December 14. The official beginning of winter is December 21. Christmas comes on the 25^th, Kwanzaa on the 26^th, and then, the following week, the last day of the year. Meanwhile, on the last day of November, as I neared the last page of Wieseltier’s book on Kaddish (mentioned and quoted in my previous post), I came upon the author’s remarks on closure, an idea he finds a “ludicrous notion of emotional efficiency” and a very American delusion.

 

Americans really believe that the past is past. They do not care to know that the past soaks the present like the light of a distant star. Things that are over do not end. They come inside us, and seek sanctuary in subjectivity. And there they live on, in the consciousness of individuals and communities. 

 

-      Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

 

 

This accords with my own life experience, with what I love in the philosophy of Henri Bergson, and with what I see across my country and around the world today. What do you make of these words?

 

The soul does not heal as the body heals, because the soul is improved, and even enchanted, by its wounds.

 

Improved? I need to think about that. I remember being surprised by a French mother’s concern that her young child’s fall would result in a small scar. Life, I thought then, as I still think today, is the accumulation of scars visible and invisible. I remember, as a child, being very proud of the slightest scar, happy to have been visibly marked by life, with my own personal, unique history inscribed on my skin.

 

Another:

 

…Nothing happens once and for all. It all visits, it all returns. But ‘closure’ says once and for all. This is a misunderstanding of subjectivity, which is essentially haunted.

 

Enchanted. Haunted. It all returns.

"Love returns always"

A friend asked me to recommend writers who have addressed the question of the meaning of life, and her request alarmed me. Countless people through the ages have written books on the subject, from the simplistic and maudlin to the impossibly sublime, but why would anyone take a writer’s word for the answer? Why would anyone take anyone else’s answer? How could they? 

 

I can see, of course, the value of considering what other people have said, but I replied that I don’t think there is a singular correct answer to the “Why?” question (“Why are we here?”) or some unique hidden meaning already given for all to find by diligent searching. This is not intended to be an answer, mind you: I am only stating my personal belief, which is that we find our own life’s meaning by making it, find something to live for by giving our life to it. We can live for God or for love, for art or literature or history, for birds or dogs or elephants — the list is endless. We may attempt to grow a perfect apple or ear of corn or write a perfect sentence or build a perfect bridge or simply do our best in whatever small corner we find ourselves. Why not multiple meanings? And maybe, even probably, what is most meaningful in one phase of life will be replaced or enlarged by something else later on. 

 

My friend asked another question: How should we live in the world? I feel on more solid footing with that query and hesitate only to put my answer clearly and briefly: 

 

Toward others (and oneself), practice compassion. Toward the natural world, practice curiosity and gentleness. Pay attention to all around you and be grateful.

 

But then, maybe this answer too is an answer for me and not for everyone? I don’t know. I only know that it has been many years since I first felt that paying attention was my #1 job in life. It is such a miracle, after all, to be alive. And surely part of the gratitude we owe for that miracle is awareness of it in as much detail as we can take in. 

 

(Not that we can ever be fully aware of everything every moment. As I sit tapping out these words, it is all too easy to forget the patient dog girl waiting for my attention. And do I even notice the tiny spider in the corner of a picture frame? But what is not the central focus of my awareness is still there, nearby and all around. I smell turkey broth simmering and dried apples rehydrating in cider, see lamplight falling on a bowl of fruit, hear the wind driving snow across the meadow, and I remember noticing, only an hour or two before, that the tall dry giant bluestem grass in the meadow is the same toasted gold color of the highest branches of the black willow trees along the no-name creek.)

Not only is life a gift, but it goes by quickly. Friends who married each other in their 70s, a new start late in life for both, acknowledged that they were entering the game in the fourth quarter but realized that the game wasn't over. A widowed friend recently took the plunge and brought a new puppy into her home. I cut small cedar branches for the house for Thanksgiving and on Friday got out my little Santa band. Where there's life, there's life!

 

Winter beginning on December 21? For me, this year, it began November 29. It is here now. 

Looking and Looking and Looking!

 

Morning comes to Suttons Bay

Collecting Mornings

 

Day was at hand. … The blue darkness lay long in the glade where I had so sweetly slumbered; but soon there was a broad streak of orange melting into gold…. A solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual and lovely coming in of day. 

 

-      Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey

 

My “travels” are with a dog, but lately I too have been collecting early mornings, saving them up against the weeks of darker dawns to come. One day last week an appointment in Suttons Bay took me in that direction, and I went earlier than necessary to make a stop for coffee and donut, giving Sunny and me a chance to watch daylight come over the water. The very next morning I had to get garbage out to the highway for pickup by 7 a.m. and decided, because I needed bread, to keep going to 9 Bean Rows. I'm not quite sure how I ended up in Omena to watch darkness fade away, but it was another “lovely coming in of day,” to quote RLS. 

Another day begins in Omena

But whenever rain doesn’t interfere and I have no business or errands elsewhere, Sunny and I begin our days outdoors more simply, with about an hour-long walk from our front door and back home again. So much to see! And for her, I’m sure, so much to smell! 

Sky one morning closer to home

Then there are Sundays and Mondays, too, my days off from bookselling, so again, if rain or other business does not conflict, after our early morning walk, Sunny and I can go to the dog park to meet friends! – a word Sunny recognizes, although I think she interprets its meaning as “fun.” 

On the way to the dog park via Mill Street in Northport

Coming back the same beautiful way

With the last of October’s leaves still clinging to the trees, as well as blowing in the wind, I took long routes back home on both Sunday and Monday. 

View from high on Onomonee Road

Winding along Gills Pier Road

These are my “travels,” then: walks and drives with my dog in the near vicinity of our home, as I tell her frequently how lucky we are to have a home and to live in a beautiful place.

 

Doggie Digression

 

I’ve said that Sunny thinks ‘friends’ means ‘fun,’ so what does she think it means when I say, ‘Momma has to go to work’? What is ‘work’? What she knows is the routine that accompanies the words—her water dish filled, treats sprinkled on the bed, the momma leaving the house, and Sunny staying home. 

Then there is ‘Go for a ride?’ and ‘Go for a ride, go for a walk?’ Those phrases mean we head for the car together. 

‘Bring it!’ encourages her to bring back that tennis ball she chased and caught. Sometimes she starts back without it and needs to be reminded with ‘Get it!’ and 

‘Bring it!’ 

I haven’t stressed the word ‘car’ to her, but ‘house’ is one all my dogs have learned. It means we’re going indoors now, and Sunny knows that word, too. Will there be food involved? I’m sure that’s uppermost in her mind. Maybe that's what ‘house’ means to her?

 

Past, Present, Future

 

Pascal’s wager is so uninteresting. Like all bets, it lives in the future. It is just another presentiment, just another theology of postponement, in which the present is disowned. 

 

-      Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish

 

 

Solitude intensifies the ache of beautiful autumn days for me, the excitement of panoramic color in sunshine as unsharable as the closed-in feeling of a day of rain, and so, hungry to share, I crowd images into my blog posts. But we were not, you and I, gazing at these scenes together in the same moments, and my sweet dog was, I’m sure, more intent on watching for squirrels or deer or turkeys than she was delighting in scenery. Still, I cannot disown the beauty of the present, even as I long for the sharing times of autumns past.

 

I used to think the worst part of dying would be leaving the story in the middle and not knowing “how it turned out,” but of course there is no “turning out,” no end to the story, as long as the human race manages to avoid extinction, and do I really want to know “how it turns out,” anyway? Either the final end of our species or the nearer, intermediate results and consequences of present events? Henri Bergson, one of history’s most optimistic philosophers, died during the Nazi Occupation of Paris, not living to see the Liberation. But then, was the Liberation “the end”? Could anyone celebrating the end of World War II in 1945 have foreseen the resurgence of Nazism—and in the U.S.A., of all places? 

 

Recently, in a box of deacquisitioned books from a private library, come to inhabit my bookshop until they find new homes, I found a fascinating little paperback published in 1945, just after the end of the war. The Constitution of the United States: Its Sources and Its Application, by Thomas James Norton, contains more than the bare text of our Constitution. Line by line, Norton gives background and explanation for phrases and statements, and his explanatory commentary is illuminating, to put it mildly. 

For example, the reasoning behind counting each enslaved black African as 3/5 of a person was a compromise between North and South having to do with direct taxes, the North contending that the South would be undertaxed if slaves were not counted, Southern states arguing that they would be overtaxed if slaves were counted. It had nothing to do with recognizing personhood of enslaved peoples, nothing to do with envisioning the end of slavery, and everything to do with taxes. Only after the compromise was reached was the counting method applied to determining how many representatives each state would have in Congress, and there it is interesting to note that while not counting the enslaved population at all would have benefitted the South in terms of taxation, counting every five enslaved person as three state residents worked to the advantage of those states in the House of Representatives.

 

What I’m really excited about is that this Thomas James Norton title is still in print and currently available through my national book distributor, so I should have copies here in the shop by the end of the week! Of course, if I need to order more, I’ll be happy to do that, too. As Americans, we all need to educate ourselves on the background of current debated issues.

 

 

Taking It (All?) In

 

My hero Brown Dog usually lives in borrowed deer cabins. I’m aware that he’s almost become a survival mechanism when I’m at desperate ends. My life at my cabin when I’m not working bears similarities. I might wake early and take a walk while my mind is still empty which allows me to see the landscape more vividly and, at rare times, holographically with the additional illusion that you can see all sides of a tree or a hill at once, the slightest filaments of time herself flutter in the air. 

 

-      Jim Harrison, Off to the Side

 

 

The landscape around me is vivid in autumn, so how could I see it otherwise? But seeing all sides of a tree or a hill at once is something I have never managed to do, and though I do sense time’s filaments fluttering nervously, even when the air is still, when I stop to think about it all I wonder what is there that I’m not seeing. All the hidden elements and workings of nature and man. 

Impossible not to see this!

But what happened here?

And what is going on in this corner, hidden under the leaves?

The other day I had a discussion with someone who blamed “migrants” for rising medical costs. When I asked for clarification, she said she didn’t mean only immigrants, with or without documents, but apparently food stamp recipients and people on unemployment, all of whom she saw as contributing to costs borne by others, including herself. She is intelligent and hardworking and has often worked two jobs in order to meet expenses, so after she described a couple of scenarios, I finally saw part of the problem. 

 

People in an ER waiting room or using food stamps at a grocery store are visible. CEOs and high-stakes investors in private equity companies, the companies buying up medical practices, dental practices, hospitals, nursing homes, even veterinary clinics—those people are not visible! You don’t see billionaires in the ER or at the grocery store or pumping their own gas or anywhere you and I usually encounter our fellow Americans. 

 

Two years ago I had no clue about private equity companies, either. Didn’t know what they were or how they operated. No idea. They were not visible to me. Learning about them was a shock.

 

How often do we see our United States representatives and senators in person? We certainly never see them being entertained by high-stakes lobbyists! Those scenes form no part of our daily lives.

 

Add to the visible/invisible divide all the media machines that concentrate on and exaggerate the visible poor (priced out of so many aspects of the market economy), while ignoring, except for glamor or sex scandals, the invisible ultra-wealthy who profit from that same market, reaping higher and higher dividends from our rising costs without being taxed accordingly, thanks to their connections to power.

 

As a bookseller, my responsibility is to select books I think people already want but also, as the fictional bookseller Roger Mifflin put it, those they don’t know they want. Want. Besides meaning desire, ‘want’ can also mean a lack or unfulfilled need. “It wants salt,” the Artist used to say.

 

And then sometimes—often?—after cramming my head full of economics and history, I want a light-hearted murder mystery, maybe one narrated by a dog, so believe me, I understand that, too, and no one has to be embarrassed by asking for what they want in my bookshop!

Recent binge!

 

Chuck Collins will be here next week!

 

Despite the title and cover illustration of his latest book, Burned by Billionaires, Chuck Collins is a calm, personable, mild-mannered, approachable human being with both feet on the ground and a mind open to questioning, so please come hear him speak next Wednesday, November 12, at 4 p.m. Bring your own open, questioning mind and please feel welcome to join a discussion following his presentation. I have some questions of my own, and we will have a stimulating time, I’m sure! I even have an idea for a very, very modest and (I hope) somewhat amusing door prize....

Don't forget our world's beauty!