Catching Up -- Partway, At Least

Foreground: coreopsis. Background: Duck Lake.

When someone the other day told me she follows my blog, besides being surprised I was also chagrined to realize how far I’ve been falling behind on posting. It’s been almost two weeks. Yikes! That is not because nothing is happening! (Far from it. Quite the opposite.) Lots more news soon, but for now, here are a few notes from Northport and nearby.

 

 

First, the Blossoms

Old Dog Ears Books home, 1997-????

Coreopsis (opening image) are going crazy right now in Leelanau County. There is a corner down by Duck Lake (south of Leland, where M-22 meets M-204) that is almost solid gold, while in Northport, brilliant red poppies (immediately above) in front of Porcupine (once the home of Dog Ears Books, back in the late 1990s), on the corner of Mill and Nagonaba, are still vivid though beginning to fade. Spiderwort, on the other hand, will go on and on and on, something I really appreciate about spiderwort, along with the sculptural quality its leaves add to a vase of flowers, either wildflowers or blooms from the garden. There is more spiderwort in my old corner garden on the Nagonaba side, right next to this welcoming bench in front of Sally Coohon’s shop, Dolls and More (her building another of the many homes of Dog Ears Books over the years).

 

Other Northport News

 

Here on Waukazoo Street, our building is having a modest makeover. Fresh paint! Very nice! Deborah Ebbers, Studio and Gallery; Dog Ears Books; Red Mullein – all with a newly spiffed-up exterior as we head into the heart of summer.

Former Tribune, now Big Dipper

Ice cream! Northport will not be without ice cream this summer, as that wonderful Kevin Murphy (Kevin and Amy have New Bohemian Café on Waukazoo and the Omena Country Store in Omena) has teamed up with one of his café baristas to open the Big Dipper. Perfect name, isn’t it? Hard and soft ice cream, many brands and flavors. 

New restaurant, Faro, on SE corner of Waukazoo and Nagonaba

 

Meanwhile the folks who used to be in that building where you’ll get your ice cream this summer, the Tribune gang, have moved down to the corner of Waukazoo and Nagonaba and are serving meals as Faro. 

 

And did we mention (probably not yet) that Northport is celebrating its 175^th birthday this summer? 

 

Today, For Me

 

Forty-four years ago, June 18, 1980, the Artist and I were married by a magistrate in the old downtown courthouse in Kalamazoo. I picked wildflowers in the early morning for our late morning civil ceremony. Our children were our witnesses. Afterward, a dear friend took us all out to lunch, and following lunch we, the newlyweds, went home to change into old clothes and work in the yard. You see, we had had our “honeymoon” trip to the U.P. long before (never mind how long), and working outdoors together on that lovely June day felt just fine – on a day very like today, with flowers blooming and sun shining…. 

Kalamazoo, June 18, 1980

All the Artist ever wanted to do was to make a living with his paintings, but we also fantasized for years about having a bookshop in a little town. Living in the country was another dream. Leelanau County? Could any of it ever come true? Years later, we made it all happen.

 

 

Reminder: Author Visit on Saturday

 

Bonnie Jo Campbell will be at Dog Ears Books this coming Saturday, June 22, signing her latest novel, The Waters, beginning at 1 p.m. We are fortunate that Bonnie found time in her busy schedule to come to Northport – her third visit to my bookstore! – so please come and make her welcome and buy a copy of her book. A few of you have already bought the book from me, so by all means bring it with you on Saturday, and she will sign it. If you have any pictures of donkeys, bring those along, too. Bonnie has donkeys, and they loom large in her legend (as Ringo said so memorably of his drums).

BJC at home as Lady Liberty! Isn't this the coolest?

More:

Bonnie Jo Campbell, a master of rural noir, returns with the fierce, mesmerizing novel THE WATERS, a story about exceptional women and the soul of a small town.

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp-an area known as "The Waters" to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan-herbalist Hermine "Herself" Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three daughters. The youngest, beautiful and inscrutable Rose Thorn, has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy "Donkey" Zook, to grow up wild. Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood. With a "ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world" (New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.

Bonnie Jo Campbell, a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the recipient of the AWP's Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and a Pushcart Prize, lives outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, with donkeys. 

Travel, Poetry, and Some Secrets of the “Most Beautiful” Places

Surely you’ve all heard by now—“Good Morning America” found Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore to be the most beautiful place in the United States. We had some stiff competition, so it's pretty big county news. What’s really funny are the different local responses to the news from residents and visitors, old and new, fulltime and parttime. Some, rubbing their hands together, eagerly anticipate a boom, while others shudder in dread of the same. Are big changes in the wind? Will Cape Cod, the Grand Tetons and Hawaii’s golden beaches be deserted for the glories of northern Michigan? Somehow I doubt it. The shelf life of a morning news segment is briefer than anyone imagines.

Meanwhile, here on Waukazoo Street, the bad news or the good news--depending on your point of view--is that the TV crew did not get up to Northport at all. (It's going to take a lot to spoil us!) Even star community booster Mario Batali, when touting area restaurants, doesn't spill all the beans in his poke. For instance, did he tell the world that he brought another visiting celebrity to dinner one night at the Garage Bar and Grill in Northport and that the two of them were back the next day for lunch with Mario's wife? No, he did not. We here at the northernmost end of Leelanau County still have some--er, oops! Cat out of bag! Sorry, Bruce and George!


Really? Honestly? I can think of countless beautiful places in Michigan that tourists from New York and California, let alone other parts of the world, never see. They don’t even suspect the existence of these secret gems hidden away in plain sight but perhaps without a lot of signs pointing the way. My friend Laurie and I spoke of this years ago, lying in the sun on the dock at Charley and Mary’s lake—which is what we always called it, and I’ll say no more about where in the state it is to be found. Unsung treasures! I’m sure that what is true of Michigan is true of every state and every country in the world. It’s been true of every place I’ve ever visited, at least.

Then there was this summer story:

“Stranded in Northport”

A woman not interested in art or books—although, in fairness, maybe she would have been some other time—spent a quarter of an hour in my bookstore on her cell phone, discussing with someone on the other end the calamity of being “stranded in Northport” due to boat engine troubles. When she got off the phone and relayed the latest news to her husband, he said cheerfully, “So maybe I should get two books then!” Her reply: “That’s not funny.” I thought it was. I thought it showed true vacation spirit.


How many people slaving away at jobs in unappealing places would love to be “stranded in Northport” on vacation? A man from Wisconsin got a big laugh at Barb’s Bakery one morning a few years back when he declared Northport “the holy grail” of destinations. But then, he had to make the trip on his sailboat through “Death’s Door” to get out of his Wisconsin port and arrive here safely.

Follow the crowd or take the road less traveled? It can still make all the difference. What’s your take?