Reading, Talking, and Islands of Light

Sunny Juliet’s biggest winter thrill may be finding deer bones left behind by coyotes, but when she has enjoyed one for a day or two and her momma surreptitiously bags it and spirits it away, she makes do with any old bone, because however marrow- and flesh-free the bone, it has plenty of chewing left in it. 

Sunny! Her very name speaks light.

Reading for distraction

 

A good friend told me she is currently reading a book of ecclesiastical history by a 4^th-century scholar! Feeling like an incredible lightweight, I admitted to her that I had laid aside The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, which I was inspired to read after reading the novel Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet, to re-read, for the -nth time, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a book I know practically by heart. I told her I was “distracting myself from real-life lies and murder.” She replied with a confession of her own—that over the past two weeks she has re-read, for the fifth or sixth time each, six of the seven Harry Potter books! “Distractions,” she noted, “are intellectual life savers.” That made me feel better. 

 

 

Serious reading

 

Besides casual bedtime reading of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (quite the hothead, as well as a marvelously gifted artist and craftsman), I've gotten started this week on a couple of other serious and more contemporary books—books of our own time, that is—one of those, Jamie Raskin’s Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy. Here is the stunning opening paragraph in the preface to Raskin’s book:

 

In the week between December 31, 2020, and January 6, 2021, my family suffered two impossible traumas: the shattering death by suicide of my beloved twenty-five-year-old son, Tommy, and the violent mob insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left several people dead, more than 140 Capitol and Metropolitan Police officers wounded and injured, hundreds of people (including several in our family) fleeing for their lives, and the nation shaken to its core. Although Tommy’s death and the January 6 insurrection were cosmically distinct and independent events, they were thoroughly intertwined in my experience and my psyche. I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to disentangle and understand them to restore coherence to the world they ravaged. 

 

January 6, 2021, was Rep. Raskin’s first day back in the House following the death of his son only a week before. Probably still in shock, he did not fear for his life while traveling to the Rayburn Building, despite threatening crowds and gestures from people in those crowds. The important procedure of the day was counting and certifying votes from all 50 states to insure the peaceful transfer of power, a procedure that had never in our nation’s history been sidetracked or prevented from occurring, and the Congressman was going to do the job he had sworn an oath to do. 

 

When the mob breached the Capitol and members of Congress had to leave their Chamber for safety, Raskin says he felt “curiosity, anger, resolve,” but no fear, because for him the worst had already happened. His son had died. Reliving January 6 in the present tense, he continues,

 

But I am still in the land of the living, and Tommy is with me somehow every step of the way. He is occupying my heart and filling my chest with oxygen. He is showing me the way to some kind of safety.

 

My beautiful son is giving me courage as we flee the U.S. Capitol Building for our lives.

 

My trauma, my wound, has now become my shield of defense and my path of escape, and all I can think of is my son propelling me forward to fight. 

 

 

Giving up on a book

 

I got this far in a draft on Friday and returned that night to Cellini but finally set him aside in disgust, 159 pages in, heartily sick of the man. I don’t even want to quote him but will only say that after so many pages of boasting and a temper that erupted time after time into violence, even murder, it was his behavior at an overnight lodging place that revealed the man’s essential pettiness. Greatly talented, obviously, but thin-skinned, vindictive and petty in the extreme. 

 

Here's the incident: Cellini and a friend are traveling and stop at an inn to stay overnight. The innkeeper wants payment for the room in advance rather than in the morning, and Cellini is incensed. He finally pays and is pleased to find a clean, spacious room with new beds and immaculate linens, but his sense of outrage persists. He contemplates killing the innkeeper, as one possibility. He considers slaughtering the innkeeper’s horses. At last he hits on the expedient of destroying the beds and linens—and is inordinately pleased with himself as he continues on his way! A mean, cowardly, and completely inexcusable “revenge” for something that was not even unreasonable in the first place—being asked to pay for a room before occupying it! 

No, I do not want to spend any more time with this horrid, vile little man! I will keep the book in my home library only because it was, as a used book with illustrations by Dali, one of the first gifts I ever gave the Artist in my own life, and I keep it for the inscription, not for the content. I only hope my Artist never read it and only looked at the Dali art.

On second thought, maybe I will tear out and keep only the inscription page and ditch the book. What do you think?

 

 

Avoiding difficult subjects

 

The news this past week has been heartbreaking, enraging, and terrifying. As I see it, nothing less than the soul of our country is at stake, and yet there are people who think we should remain silent on politics when we disagree in order to keep family and community “peace.” Why, they ask, do we have to let one subject, i.e., politics, completely overtake our lives and relationships? Why can’t we simply talk about other things and avoid politics?

 

From where I stand, this means avoiding a subject that is on my mind every single day. It wasn’t always so, and my thoughts still free-range over a vast number of subjects, but right there in the forefront, these days, is the struggle for my country’s soul.

 

Thinking about not-talking-about-it, here are a couple historical scenes I try to imagine. 

 

Picture family members or friends during the period of the American Revolution. Now imagine them split between those supporting the Declaration of Independence and those remaining loyal to the King of England and then trying to avoid politics in order to enjoy one another’s company and conversation. Can you see that working?

 

Or think of Americans with intertwined lives but opposing politics during the Civil War, a family or community riven by that conflict. Imagine a supporter of the Union, an abolitionist, asked to “avoid politics” in order to maintain a cordial, loving, ongoing daily relationship with a member of the Confederacy, perhaps even a slaveholder.

 

Imagine someone in either of these situations, in either of these time periods, saying something like, “Can’t we just have a nice Thanksgiving dinner and talk about other things?” People whose lives have not—yet!—been touched personally will think my examples are far-fetched and exaggerated, but I don't think so.

 

Pretend there’s no elephant standing between us in the living room? Pretend that your vision of the future (or a future you are unwittingly helping to create) is not my vision of earthly hell? Pretend that your political allies are not trying to wipe me and mine off the face of the earth?

 

Heartbreak. Rage. Fear. Stuff all that down and pretend it isn't there? How on earth?

 

Taking breaks

Happy news: NJ's is open again.

Since last fall, I have been in a different kind of discussion, an ongoing conversation that is for me an island of sunlight in this dark, violent winter of our national discontent. It is a conversation without limits, meandering from the weather and what each of us had for dinner to literature, through history, and beyond. We share stories from our childhoods and younger years, talk of our families and other people we have known who were important to us. We speak of death and grief. No topic is too trivial or too grand or too puzzling or too silly. And yet we touch on politics and current (outrageous) events infrequently and usually only briefly.

 

There are two reasons why politics is not a larger part of this ongoing conversation. The first reason is that we don’t need to argue about it. We are in agreement. The second is that we don’t need to let that dark cloud come between us and happiness. When you have an island of light in your life, the last thing you want to do is trigger a power outage. 

 

This is not avoidance. It’s taking a break, it’s recharging, it’s drawing and giving strength. See the difference?

A welcome morning sunrise

I don't have much to say.

Last night, the last night of this year’s Hanukkah; tomorrow night, Christmas Eve.

Lights! Light! The winter solstice behind us, we now have one or two minutes of additional daylight every day.

Cards and letters, greetings, gifts and gatherings. 

This is the good news—and while there is all too much of the other kind, this morning I am focusing on light and love and life and wishing the same for each of you this holiday season at another year’s end. We will never have this day again.

From the Tenth to the Twelfth

Looking out onto Waukazoo Street

December

Oddly enough, the name of our twelfth month of the year comes from the Latin word for ten, decem, thanks to an earlier Roman ten-month calendar. New months January and February were added on at the beginning of the year on the new Julian calendar, rather than at the end, in 45 BCE, making the old tenth month the new twelfth month. 

 

To a friend who remarked gloomily the other day that winter “hasn’t even started yet,” I gave my own Pollyannaish (not my nature--I have to work hard at it) view of December 21: That’s when darkness begins to retreat, days begin to lengthen, so I see the official first day of winter as a happy turning toward spring—and don’t try to talk me out of it! 

Morning sun! A rare winter treat in Michigan!

 When Is Your Work “Finished”?

 

French writer Albert Camus died in a traffic accident at age 46, and his last book, an unfinished draft manuscript, was found in the mud at the scene of the accident. Russian fiction writer Gogol completed only the first volume of his projected trilogy, destroying multiple copies of sequels that failed to satisfy him. American poet and novelist Jim Harrison died in his writing studio with an unfinished poem on his desk. 

 

Some people find it tragic when writers’ last works are not completed. I find it inspiring. 

 

Is this an old Chinese saying or something that can be traced to Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi? “A man builds his house; then he dies.” My husband the Artist took it to mean that living meant working toward a goal, “building one’s house,” and that having finished the house down to the last perfect detail, there was nothing left to do but die. And so, the Artist’s thought continued, it was best to have many unfinished projects, goals to anticipate, and reasons to get up in the morning. Having finished all projects meant no more reason to live, as he saw it.

Unfinished, unsigned --

From time to time I wonder what people do with themselves when they retire, sell their houses, stop driving, and move to senior apartments. Some, I’m sure, remain socially active in their new environments, but what about life outside of socializing? What would I do if deprived of my housework, yard work, dog responsibilities, long walks and drives, travel, gardening and foraging, and my bookselling life? Reading and writing would remain, as long as my eyes and mind cooperated, and maybe I would even get more writing done—actually hold myself to a daily schedule! (There’s a concept, eh?) Physical tasks, though, have always been fruitful interludes during any big writing project (say, a doctoral dissertation) I’ve ever had. Washing dishes or raking leaves, shoveling snow or taking a long walk or drive—anything to jog the mind out of a rut, because getting away from a desk re-opens space for thoughts and words to find each other in the happy, cooperative way they can stubbornly refuse to do when a writer sits too long in one place. 

 

The Artist and I talked about taking a very long, meandering way home from Cochise County, Arizona, in the spring of 2022, driving north as far as the Badlands of South Dakota (he’d never seen my birth state) and then east to the Twin Cities of Minnesota (to visit kids and grandkids). He had in mind an experimental method for casting his wax sculptures and looked forward to trying that, also. A friend asked if he left unfinished paintings. Of course. But that’s just it. He went into the hospital that last time already looking forward to coming home and going on. He was living, not dying, until he died. For Harrison, life was writing poems, and so Jim, too, caught mid-poem, despite his acknowledged loneliness in the months following Linda’s death, was still living up to the end. 

 

“We must draw a lesson from this,” say the Chinese. What lesson do you draw? I say, don’t finish your house and call your life over. There is always more to do, and it’s good to keep living as long as you have breath.

 

 

Mailman Wisdom

When Stephen was laid off from a high-paying job as some kind of business consultant in the early days of the COVID epidemic, everyone else was laying off or being laid off, too, which is how Stephen found himself taking the test and training to become a rural mail carrier in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, his home territory. Accustomed to feeling smart as well as being well paid, Stephen was overwhelmed by his new job and discouraged by mistakes. One day everything came to a head when he forgot that a house on his route was vacant, stuck his hand into the mailbox, and was attacked by hornets. “I can’t do this,” he tells a fellow carrier who has been helping him with the new route. Her advice is simple.

 

“…It’s like this for everybody. Just show up one more day. Just deliver the rest of this stuff and you’ll be done for today.”

 

“Okay.” 

 

“Don’t quit today.” 

 

-      Stephen Starring Grant, Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home

 

 

A friend and I were talking about how difficult life can be, especially these days, what with aging (for us), and political division, and what feels to us like the tearing-down of the America that had been built during our lifetime, and we acknowledged how easy it can be to slip into depression and say, “I can’t do it!” We talked about how often people say, “Take one day at a time,” when there is, after all, no alternative! 

 

When I told her about the mail carrier saying, “Don’t quit today,” she liked it as much as I did. Really, “Take one day at a time” and “Don’t quit today” may look like the same advice, but don’t they feel different somehow? For me, when things look particularly gloomy, “Don’t quit today” is all I need to promise myself. Not quit today? I can do that! I’m not looking at a whole long string of “one day at a time” days, just this one day I’m in. Don’t quit today. All right!

 

(I don’t need to tell myself that every day or even most days. Most days are either neutral or brightened by what Dana Frost calls “forced joy,” or begin and end in downright deep gratitude. Once in a while there are spots of bliss. It’s just good to be able to pull out a mantra that works when you need it.)

Postage stamps are miniature works of art.

I found Mailman an inspiring book. In one early chapter, I feared the author was going to bog down in procedural minutia, but I waded through those pages and was glad I did, because knowing how much the job involves makes Grant’s livelier stories all that much more vivid, and without ever having worked for USPS, I can appreciate and identify with his feeling for the postal service. They don’t cherry-pick profitable routes! USPS delivers to everyone. In that regard, they are like public schools and similarly foundational to the social infrastructure of the United States.

 

Coming from a family of letter-writers, I absolutely love the United States Postal Service! Their service is priceless! But how many of us know how hard the work is, how efficiently it is managed at the over 40,000 local offices, and what a downright bargain it is compared to postal prices in other parts of the world? Thank you, Benjamin Franklin, and thank you, U.S. postal workers, past, present, and future!

 

And now, a little shameless self-promotion

 

First, I’ll boast on behalf of my village and say that Northport’s holiday-decorated tree is easily the most beautiful in the county. Of course, you know I am completely unbiased, right?

 

What I have on offer now at Dog Ears Books is a postcard featuring that beautiful tree (from 2024), and on the reverse side, where you put a postage stamp and address to someone you want to remember with a written message, are the words “Happy Holidays from Northport, Michigan!” 

I’m asking 94 cents a card, so that with tax it’s just a dollar, and I’m also selling a dozen cards for the price of ten: $9.40 + tax = $10. You may not send out hundreds of cards for the holidays, but there are surely a dozen people in your life whose hearts would be warmed to having a greeting from Northport. Anyway, I’m hoping that’s the case.

 

New Playground!

Now that snow is falling and piling up and drifting along our driveway and in the yard around the old farmhouse, once more we have periodic morning visits from a snowplow. Sunny finds it alarming to have a truck drive right into the yard, but the great part for her comes after the truck leaves, having cleared a big new playground for us! Room for the bouncy ball to bounce! Room for Sunny to run and leap after a Frisbee! Maybe that old snowplow isn’t such a bad thing, after all!

Color/Light and Home in Autumn

 

 All the color that you see is light, pure and simple. And when there is no light there is no color. We think we see colored things, and in a sense we do. However, it is more accurate to say that we see the colored light reflected, transmitted, or emitted by things. It is the light alone that we see, not the things themselves. Thus our only visual contact with things is through light, light that enters our eyes.

 

…The only colors that we see are light, and as we are seeing them this light is falling on the retinas of our eyes. Were it not for light and the light-sensitive retina, we would see no color at all. Remember: color is light.

 

-      Ralph Hattersley, Beginner’s Guide to Color Photography

 

 

The Artist and I used to have frequent conversations about color and light. In my graduate philosophy classes, I learned to categorize color as a ‘secondary quality,’ that is, a quality not inherent in objects but created from interaction between objects and our senses, or, as Hattersley writes, between the “things themselves” and the retinas of our eyes--which leaves out the brain’s interpretation, but you get the point. Quick review of primary and secondary qualities, ignoring subsequent challenges to the distinction, can be found here. 

 

There are certain seasons, certain sensual prompts, that take me back to the Home Place. Now, as back then, fall is the time when nature speaks most clearly to me. In autumn one is treated to an orgy of sights, sounds, and smells that can be wonderfully overwhelming. … The tired sameness of September’s deep green fades then flames into October’s vermilion sumacs and scarlet maples, lemon-yellow poplars and golden hickories. In those days of crispness I want to linger long enough to hear every sound and look far enough to see into forever. 

 

-      J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature

 

 

Of all the seasons, autumn for me is the most deeply drenched in memory, the most saturated (even in its colorful dress) with poignancy and longing for what will never be again. And yet, it is not only September getaways and “county cruises” with the Artist that haunt me, but long walks home from first grade, university classes, my son’s baby and toddler years, past dogs, and so on, split-second images from years ago flashing, superimposed, on achingly beautiful scenes of the present. And yet (again, “and yet”!), fall is so beautiful, whether colors are shining in the sun or gleaming in the rain—or, as last Sunday evening, sleeping in the dark while an old ivory crescent moon lit my way home—that despite the pangs, I find myself wanting to gather up every moment of it and hold it tight, as if it could be harvested to carry through the monochromatic weeks ahead.

 

More than anything else, the degree of satisfaction to be gained from a life rooted in home depends on the strength of one’s conviction that there is nothing better down the road. Betterment comes from within a person, not from within geography. But I believe that had I not left home for awhile [sic], I would not have been completely convinced of that. There would always have been a lingering question in my mind: Would life somewhere else have been more pleasant?

 

-      Gene Logsdon, You Can Go Home Again

 

I had an interesting conversation today with a younger woman whose dream of country living in Leelanau County did not bring her the contentment it brought me. Perhaps it was the commotion of extensive remodeling added to raising three children in it that broke the marriage’s back. Whatever it was, taking care of the farmhouse and acreage on her own proved much more work than she wanted, and she is happier now (divorced, the house sold) with a lighter load of responsibility. She is also particularly hungry for travel. 

The two of us realized that our present situations and feelings, hers and mine, are diametrically opposite. I don’t know if I will ever travel again, if it involves flying and leaving my dog and/or the borders of my country. (Day trips with my dog are another matter.) Even on the rare occasions when I go out for an hour or two in the evening, I often look forward to coming home to Sunny again before I’ve gotten out the driveway. 

I have traveled to other places and lived in other places (I still miss those winters in Cochise County, Arizona), but where I am now is home. “We’re very lucky to have a home,” I tell Sunny.

Sunny seems to agree. At least, she isn’t complaining. And we will get through the winter together.

With a little help from our friends!

Very Important Postscript: Identity of November guest author has been revealed on my Northport Bookstore News blog! I will post more about the author's new book on this blog before his appearance on Nov. 12. 

Toasty Times Are Here

Beech leaves

First, fall color report: Red and orange and yellow are giving way to brown and gold. I’ve written here before, earlier this fall and in years past, that beech leaves in the fall make me think of buttered toast dripping with honey. Now that November is upon us, beech leaves are less yellow, more brown, and the oaks have turned a rich brown, also. Both oaks and beeches, especially the young ones, will hang onto some of their dark, papery leaves all winter.

 

Oak leaves in full sun do have a warm look, don't they?

The French have two words for brown: brun/brune (a hair color, for example) and marron/marrone,  used more often and also one of two names for chestnuts and the chestnut tree (which also goes by the name chataigner -- but see the blue box on this site if you want to increase your confusion), with marron also used as slang to refer to something strange or bizarre. C’est marron! If you want to refer to the color called 'maroon' in English, however, go for bordeaux in French. Like the wine. Oui, c'est marron!

-- Non, ce sont des chênes!

Lakeside oaks

Brown leaves, blue sky

With toasty colors outdoors, it’s time to reach for sweaters and comforters indoors, and I would willingly have sacrificed an hour of after-midnight dark on Sunday in order to have daylight seem to come earlier – I get confused by time changes -- but no! We were gaining an hour (of reading or sleep) to achieve the earlier morning light. (How we humans pretend! “It’s really 8 o’clock, but we’re pretending it’s 7 o’clock” is how I explain the time change to myself.) Earlier morning light is very welcome! Not so welcome is the increase in evening darkness, but next month we’ll turn the corner, I tell myself. It’s good that the equinox comes in December, so that each cold day in January and February we have a tiny bit more daylight.

There she is!

Meanwhile, only on Saturdays now is my bookstore open until 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, if there’s no one browsing at 3 p.m., I turn out the shop lights, lock the door, and go home to my dog, staying until 5 only on Saturdays. My bookstore was so busy last Saturday! I was surprised and gratified by all the number of visitors, browsers, and book buyers. Most of first two groups were also members of the third group, I'm happy to say.

Last week we had sunshine three afternoons in a row, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – and then again for most of Saturday! Basswood and black walnut trees in my yard had dropped all their leaves and stood bare, letting the sun reach accumulated leaves on the ground as Sunny Juliet and I enjoyed light and fresh air along with exercise. Every sunny hour this time of year is a gift. Soon the silver maple leaves will fall, carpeting the ground, leaving bare branches holding up the sky. (Monday: I think today's bitter cold wind will achieve that result!)

Meanwhile, indoors next to my bed these books await my attention: History of the Rain, a novel by Niall Williams; Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse, by Kim Wickens (this is a nonfiction account of the horse featured in the Geraldine Brooks novel); To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey From Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, by Diana Beresford-Kroeger; Meriwether: a novel of Meriwether Lewis and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by David Nevin; and an ARC of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel, The Waters, due to be released in January. 

I’m trying to save my reading of the Campbell book as a Christmas present to myself. Or maybe Thanksgiving weekend, if I can even wait that long.

The rest? I can’t say I’ll get through them all this month, what with the chance, as happens frequently, that something not in the stack will present itself and cut in line, so to speak -- an ever-present danger of owning a bookstore! After what seems like a lifetime of school and assigned reading, it still feels like a luxury to pick up whatever appeals to me at any given moment, and heaven knows we need little comforts and simple luxuries to keep us going, with winter’s dark and a strife-riven world pressing in upon us.

 

Previous post was my top fiction picks of 2023 from January through October, and next post will be top nonfiction. By the way, a handful of people left comments on my last post, but not a single one chimed in with a favorite novel read this year, and I know that some of you have read novels this year! One person left a new comment on a very old post, recommending a work of fiction from Scotland. Anyone else have recommendations? Anyone?

Another note, not about cold wind: If the only person who comes in the bookstore today was the one who wanted to tell me how much he loves Bonnie Jo Campbell's Q Road, my day was made!