Winter has arrived! Are you prepared?

Winter is all around us.

A friend of mine goes places in her car in winter in her indoor clothes, adding only a down vest. No gloves or mittens. No knitted cap. No heavy jacket. “I’m in the car!” she tells me. I ask her, “What if you had car trouble?” and she replies, “I would use my cell phone!” 

So wiper blades don't freeze to windshield overnight....

By contrast, I am not only layered up for driving but have an extra pair of work gloves with me in case I need to, say, open the hood—or get that shovel out of the back of the car to dig myself out of a snowbank—or whatever! Yes, I have a shovel with me. (No sandbags, but I figure I could use the car’s floormats, if necessary. Sandbags are very heavy.) Also engine oil, windshield wiper fluid, antifreeze, flashlight, and jumper cables. The bottle of drinking water, for myself and my dog, if she happens to be with me, has to come in the house overnight, or it would be just a bottle of ice, and who needs that in an emergency? (Note to self: Put blanket in car!) I take my clue from the old Tom Lehr song, “Be Prepared!”

 

On the evening of the day of his state funeral, I began reading Jimmy Carter’s memoir, Keeping Faith, about his years in the White House. I have had the book for several years but hadn’t read it because, while I have always loved Jimmy, I am usually bored by political memoirs. Too many big names, too many dates, generally not much that is personal, not much to give me insight into the writer’s personality and character. 

 

I’m happy to say that Carter’s book is very different. For one thing, he wrote it himself. It isn’t the work of a ghost writer. For another, he begins at the end, leading off with the most painful episode of his presidency, the hostage crisis. How many presidents would ever have done that? In the first pages of his memoir, he shows himself at his most vulnerable. And, of course, by then he has already lost his bid for re-election, so as the hostages are being released, he is onstage at the inauguration of his successor, Ronald Reagan. Hardly a moment of glory for Carter. But he had done the work, and the hostages were freed and came home alive.

 

He was never one to take shortcuts or “fake it,” in any of his life roles. He took the job of president of the United States seriously, writing of his preparation:  

 

From the beginning, I realized that my ability to govern well would depend upon my mastery of the extremely important issues I faced. I wanted to learn as much as possible…. (p. 57 of the Easton Press edition)

 

In his first campaign for the presidency, coming to national politics from the governorship of Georgia, Carter was so confident that he would win the White House that many called him overconfident. Yet he wrote that his “freedom to act and speak during the campaign was severely restrained by the same confidence.” What could that mean? How and why would confidence of victory restrain his freedom to act and speak? Precisely, again, because he took so seriously the job of president.

 

I ran as though I would have to govern—always careful about what I promised and determined not to betray those who gave me their support. Sometimes I irritated my opponents and the news reports by firmly refusing to answer to questions to which I did not know the answers. And repeatedly I told reporters, ‘If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president.’ Even during the earliest days I was always thinking about what would have to be done in the Oval Office after the inauguration ceremonies were over. (p. 65)

 

It drove reporters crazy that he would occasionally “I don’t know” to a question. What he needed to know, he worked to find out. What he couldn’t know ahead of time, he admitted. But always, as he campaigned for the highest office in the land, he prepared himself not only to win but to govern.

 

My life is ever so much simpler. I prepared for winter with snow tires, a new furnace, and a refill of my propane tank. Good thing, because in keeping with yo-yo weather patterns of recent months, our temperate winter weather over the holidays in northern Michigan has now given way to January temperatures in the ’teens, with single-digit wind chill (or “feels like”) readings. 

We have wind chill!

("When I was a kid," I used to tell my son, "we didn’t have wind chill!" That is, of course, we didn’t have a name for it. What would the word ‘rose’ name if there were no more roses?)

She doesn't mind snow or cold.

Dogs, though. A dog is like the legendary postman: Whatever the weather, out we go, and little does Sunny Juliet suspect how slight is her dog mom’s inclination for outdoor adventures in a punishing, sub-freezing northwest wind, sun perpetually hidden above low-hanging clouds of depressing gunmetal grey! I make my voice enthusiastic and let her watch me load my pocket with treats.... 

 

She doesn't mind at all.

Every day of our human lives, in one way or another, we are preparing for days to come, aren’t we? For me, Sunday was housework (an attempt to keep entropy at bay), Monday paperwork (getting ready for tax time), and Tuesday an early morning expedition, sans dog, to Leland to have a new (working) headlight installed, which gave me an opportunity while my car was at Van’s Garage to have coffee and breakfast in what was formerly the Early Bird (now Great Lakes Chocolate & Café) and to sit in the very corner where the Artist and I sat so many, many mornings in past years. 

View from the "bus driver's seat" --

The restaurant has not been the Early Bird for a long time, but after we moved from the village of Leland out to Leelanau Township in 2021, the Early Bird routine was no longer part of our lives, and more recent incarnations of the place never really registered on my radar. Anyway, the building has the same configuration, and the view from what the Artist used to call the “bus driver’s seat” (no booths now, but I hitched my chair around to face north) is pretty much the same. I should have been prepared for the flood of memories, but the emotions caught me off-guard. 

Then, home to books and dog! I am so lucky to have a warm, sheltering home and a lively, affectionate little companion! I still inhabit the life the Artist and I made together, and Wednesday will find me back in Northport, on Waukazoo Street, in my other little world, surrounded by books. 

Be prepared!

Omigod! Another BOOK???

View from the first juniper --

My previous post told of a climbing adventure Sunny Juliet and I had on Saturday morning after I admitted that, before our adventure, I had “gotten up on the wrong side of the bed,” as my parents used to express morning crabbiness. Returning to the cabin post-adventure, then, with no possibility of a coffee house visit in town, would I also return to crabbiness? That was the big question! I had no social plans for the day, and no plans for further adventures, so the danger was real. I busied myself by starting to cook a pot of lentils to stave off bad temper, but the success of this plan would depend on the success of the lentils….

 

Ah-ha! Suddenly I remembered that the day was Saturday, not Sunday, and that meant there might be something in my mailbox down the road! Purposely stretching out the period of anticipation, however, I chopped onion and carrot to add to the lentils, adding also dissolved tamarind paste, Better than Bouillon (chicken flavor), and plenty of curry powder. Swept the floor. Picked up a book. 

I love USPS, and they do an excellent job here!

Because, you see, if the mailbox is empty on Saturday, all hope must be deferred until Monday; but until my key unlocks the box, hope can imagine a happy outcome. Is Schrodinger’s cat dead or alive? Is my mailbox empty, or does it hold a surprise to gladden my heart? Possibilities exist, if only in the mind, until a box is opened, so why hurry, since one possibility is always disappointment? 

 

(Please note I do not say the mailbox was both empty and containing a surprise, any more than I say the cat in Schrodinger’s closed was both alive and dead until the box was opened. This frequent interpretive error of a famous argument in physics is made by those who do not recognize the argument as a reductio ad absurdum. Thank you very much!)

 

Cut to the chase. Waiting for me on Saturday was not emptiness but a book I had ordered from Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Note: When I order online, I always try to order from real bookstores.) Carry the package back to the cabin. Remove brown cardboard. Next, open the book! Again, a range of possibilities presents. Will I be made happy? Disappointed? Left indifferent?

 

Flashback. One or two friends had posted links on Facebook to the personal home library of the late Dr. Richard Macksey, humanities professor at Johns Hopkins University. Seductive images of the library made me want to know more about Richard Macksey, and after I’d read about his life and work, naturally I wanted a book he’d written, which is how this particular volume came to be in my mailbox on Saturday. 

 

Not one you would have chosen?

The book. What I found at Midtown Scholar was a paperback edition of the proceedings of an international symposium on structuralism convened at Johns Hopkins in 1966 – not only papers presented but discussion following each presentation – with, thanks to Richard Macksey, an all-star multidisciplinary cast: René Girard, Richard Macksey, Charles Morazé, Georges Poulet, Eugenio Donato, Lucien Goldmann, Tzvetan Todorov, Roland Barthes, Jean Hippolite, Jacques Lacan, Guy Rosolato, Neville Dyson-Hudson, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Pierre Vernant, and Nicolas Ruwet, to give the names in the order in which they appear on the book’s cover. The book itself is The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism & the Sciences of Man.

 

Reminder and disclaimer. I was never an English major, please recall. Reading literary and art criticism can put me off, and writing it (I learned early on, when given such an assignment, not to choose work I loved!) I found downright painful. One graduate class in Philosophy of Literature and a semester as a teaching assistant in Philosophy of Film, with another in Philosophy of Art – that is the extent of my formal background in criticism. Graduate classes in philosophy in the late 1980s, however, introduced me to Foucault and Derrida, structuralism and deconstruction. But that’s all, and it was not a road I traveled very far.

 

Back to the book. Richard Macksey’s opening remarks to the assembled group bore the title “Lions and Squares.” It was – I suppose predictably and appropriately – academic, historic, and jargon-studded. It was fine. It did the job. My heart was not set on fire, but neither did I regret having ordered the volume. I read on….

 

I should probably re-read, “Tiresias and the Critic,” presented by René Girard, and before doing that should re-read Oedipus Rex, but as there was no discussion following that short piece, I moved on to Charles Morazé on “Literary Invention,” in which he proposed to question “the relationship of literary invention to invention in general.” Both the paper and the discussion following leaned on a distinction between invention and discovery, and I found myself smiling at the discussion, so familiar from my graduate school years. I was reading happily, crabbiness banished.

 

Jackpot!

Then came “Criticism and Interiority.” At first the paper’s title gave me a sinking feeling, a feeling that could be named the “Anticipation of No Fun at All.” How wrong that prediction was, and how glad I was to have been wrong! Why was I never introduced before to Georges Poulet? Here is how he begins:

 

At the beginning of Mallarmé’s unfinished story Igitur there is the description of an empty room, in the middle of which, on a table, there is an open book. This seems to me the situation of every book, until someone comes and begins to read it. Books are objects. On a table, on shelves, in store windows, they wait for someone to come and deliver them from their materiality, from their immobility. When I see them on display, I look at them as I would at animals for sale, kept in little cages…. They wait. Are they aware that an act of man might suddenly transform their existence? Read me, they seem to say. I find it hard to resist their appeal. No, books are not just objects among others. 

 

This man is speaking my language! And while his position becomes increasingly complicated as he proceeds, I was with him all the way. He speaks of how, when we read, the mind of the author enters our own. We think the writer’s thoughts – or they think us – but we are not thereby invaded. No, in the intimacy of reading, “I begin to share the use of my consciousness…” as the author and I “…start having a common consciousness.” From his personal experience, Poulet says,

 

Thus I often have the impression, while reading, of simply witnessing an action which at the same time concerns and yet does not concern me. This provokes a certain feeling of surprise within me. I am a consciousness astonished by an existence which is not mine, but which I experience as though it were mine. 

 

Haven’t you felt this, too, at times? “Lost in a book,” now and then you remember that you are reading, that you are not the character with whom you identify or the author of the characters, that you are holding in your hands a physical object, a book, and that the words on the page are creating visions in your mind. Really, it is astonishing, is it not?

 

I will not attempt a complete exposition of the ideas in Poulet’s paper, as I’ve probably lost 95% of my readers by now, anyway, and you few stalwarts hungry for more can treat yourselves to reading his works firsthand. But first, just a little more, because I find this so delicious. Poulet draws a contrast between two kinds of critics, one who loses their [you see? I can use current pronouns, though it still goes against the grain!] own consciousness in that of the writer, the other who refuses such identification altogether. The first kind of critical thought (I might say ‘reception) he calls ‘sensuous,’ the second ‘clear.’

 

…In either case, the act of reading has delivered me from egocentricity. Another’s thought inhabits me or haunts me, but in the first case I lose myself into that alien world, and in the other I keep my distance and refuse to identify. Extreme closeness and extreme detachment have then the same regrettable effect of making me fall short of the total critical act: that is to say, the exploration of that mysterious interrelationship [my emphasis added] which, through the mediation of reading and of language, is established to our mutual satisfaction between the work read and myself. 

 

He then suggests – perfect, I say! – combining the two methods “through a kind of reciprocation and alternation,” and I am delighted! Well, there is much more about subjects and objects, subjectivity and objectivity, but I leave it to you who are interested to follow up with primary sources. 

 

The first question asked of Georges Poulet in the discussion that followed his presentation was how, if at all, reading was to be differentiated from understanding another’s speech, and while acknowledging the fundamental similarity in the two cases, Poulet pointed out that in conversation, two or more participants are not only listening but also themselves speaking,

 

…and when we speak, we don’t listen. Thus very often, conversation, instead of becoming an inquiry in which someone who listens (or who reads) strives to identify himself with the thought of someone who speaks (or writes), becomes instead, quite to the contrary, a sort of battle….

 

Here, now, re-reading, I pause. [Pause. What do you think?] Because when I read history or opinion of any kind, I read not to lose myself (as in reading a novel or a poem) but as if I am a participant in a conversation, agreeing and disagreeing, questioning, objecting – in short, definitely keeping my distance. As when I read this very paper! But this is not a major disagreement….

 

Only one more bit that I can’t stop before including: In response to a philosophical question from James Edie, Poulet addresses an implied side issue: 

 

Am I “for” or am I “against” structuralism? I simply do not know; it is not for me to say; it is for the structuralists themselves. For my own part, sometimes I feel rather alien to the abstract and to the voluntarily objective way in which these structuralists express their own discoveries, and sometimes I am even shocked by that position. Sometimes I am shocked especially by their air of objectivity (I think particularly of one of them whom I consider a friend). I am particularly shocked when he claims to arrive thereby at scientific attitudes. I must confess that, to my own mind, very clearly, very definitely, criticism has the character of knowledge, but it is not a kind of scientific knowledge, and I have to decline very strongly the name of Scientist. I am not a scientist and I do not think that any true critic when he is making an act of criticism can be a scientist. [Again, the emphasis added is my own.] 

 

Well, my love only deepens with the statement quoted above. Not all knowledge should be called science, and science does not exhaust all the possibilities of knowledge. Thank you, Monsieur Poulet, for knowing so clearly where you stand and for allowing me, in reading your words, to stand with you!

 

And, once again, I echo fervently the words of the fictional Roger Mifflin, “Thank God I am a bookseller!” Magic and mystery are on every page of every book!

 

Postscript on Wednesday: 

 

State of the Union address: I listened and was very, very proud of President Biden, both for what he said and how he said it. At the same time, I couldn’t help remembering that last year David and I listened together, and that brought tears to my eyes. Several times the president made a joke, and I thought of how important a sense of humor was to David, in his friends and in anyone who intersected with his life. I also noted times when we both would have said, “Yes!” to the president’s statements. (Unlike me, my husband always listened quietly to political speeches, saving his comments for afterward, so with him I tried to do the same.) I remembered how David’s opinion of the president (make no mistake: we both voted for him!) rose considerably after the State of the Nation address. This year again, the president showed dignity, strength, and resolve. He did not avoid controversial subjects, either. The office of the president is strong and honorable under this president.

 

Throughout the year, President Biden is not always in our faces from one day to the next and acting like the “great and powerful Oz." No, he is a team player -- but he is also a strong leader, and when he does speak out, he speaks out strongly. 

 

David, I miss you! I wish we could have listened together again this year! Hope for my country, hope for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren — that’s what I got out of President Biden’s State of the Union address, and I know I am not alone. 

Keep calm. Carry on.

Brought To You By the Letter ‘P’

 

…Dogs are always happy to share their passion about being alive. It’s easy for them to lift our foul moods because dogs bring their joy with them wherever they go.

 

-      Dogs Don’t Bite When a Growl Will Do: What Your Dog Can Teach You About Living a Happy Life, by Matt Weinstein and Luke Barber

 

 

This was a good first entry on my “Books Read 2021” list. With a distinctly Zen Buddhist background philosophy and a generous sprinkling of Western philosophers, this work by two authors writing as one (“I”) is not a book of rules for training (teaching) dogs but one that highlights dogs’ virtues and life lessons we can draw from a canine approach to living. The quote above is from Lesson 15, “Dogs Bring Joy With Them,” something no one who lives with dogs can doubt. 

 

Sarah found the energy to wag her tail more than once on her last day of life. Peasy, now that he’s been sprung from his little concrete-floored prison cell, instead of moping around about how unfair life has been to him until recently, approaches each day with boundless enthusiasm. I get to run in the wash? Chase sticks? You’re giving me another meal? I get to go with you in the car? Life is GREAT!

 

Which brings us to the first item to be covered in today’s blog post:

 

 

Peasy’s Progress

 

The first couple of meals our new dog had under our care, he fell upon like a starving wolf. When I began the process of training him to “Wait!” for permission before attacking his dish, I had to restrain him physically for several days. When at last I got him to “Sit!” on command, even as he could see the desired breakfast or dinner dish in my hand, it was real progress, and now? Now he sees the dish and sits politely without the command. I put the dish on the floor, and even as he quivers with excitement and impatience he keeps his eyes on my face, not on his food, waiting until I tell him “Okay.” 

Here he closed his eyes briefly, perhaps to lessen temptation!

Peasy had his introduction to my walking/hiking partner and her two dogs on Sunday morning. Therese and I had agreed that all three dogs would be on leashes and that she and I would first approach from opposite directions and pass each other without stopping, then walk the dogs in parallel, leash-holding humans on opposite sides of the wide dirt road. The dogs were interested in each other, and Peasy ducked behind my legs briefly when he first caught sight of them, but as the walk proceeded we all moved along in harmony. No growling or lunging or (from Peasy) cringing. Eventually butts were sniffed, and the oldest, calmest dog, Buddy, was allowed off his leash. On our second encounter, we will make the walk a little longer, but we humans are already very pleased with how things worked out the first time around. Sarah had so much fun being a seasonal member of Therese’s pack that I can’t help hoping Peasy will be able to fit in equally well.

 

Mr. Peasy has been pretty good on a leash right from the beginning. He sticks close to my left knee, right where he belongs. Nevertheless, I am adding regular on-leash walks to our morning routine, because our Sarah was good on a leash when young, but then, when she “needed” less and less to be leashed, our discipline fell away. That was my fault and not a mistake I want to repeat with Peasy.

 

He faces a couple of challenges, which is to say that I face a couple of challenges with him. The easier one to cure will be his jumping up on the bed before I get in, so eager is he for our evening pack time. He’s great about getting down after pack time, when we tell him “Go to bed now,” and is, as I’ve already said, very good about waiting for permission to dive into a meal, so teaching him to wait for permission to jump up on the bed shouldn’t take more than one or two lessons. 

 

The second and bigger challenge is chewing things he should not chew. Peasy is a young dog with a lot of nervous energy, and I want to be a good dog mom for him but don’t want to be spending every waking minute in training, so to keep him out of trouble this morning (he kept yielding to the temptation of picking up one of my shoes in his mouth), I put his leash on and draped the leash across my knees while I worked at the table, not paying him any attention at all. Quickly he chose to lie down and wait patiently. So we’ll probably take that route for a while – when he rejects all his own chewing things as “old and boring!” – until he is ready to calm down without the leash. Which may take months, who knows?

 

PJ’s Project

 

Dog training, however, important and time-intensive as it must be, is not my only winter project. One that fell by the wayside over the holidays and with the addition of Peasy to the household is now, albeit in fits and starts, back on track, and that’s the one I call my Silas Project. Originally “His Time and Mine,” I described what I’ve gradually come to call “The Silas Project” this way: 

 

It is a comparison of pre-Civil War American life with our life today in 2020-2021 America, a very personal comparison drawn from both periods, using a young man’s handwritten diary from the 19^th century and my own journals, thoughts and reflections, all of it set in social and political context, historical and contemporary. 

 

David pressed me one day for an “elevator pitch,” and that’s what I’ve came up with. As for genre, that’s a tough one. “Is it biography?” David asked. No, not really, though there is biographical material in it. Frankly, when I think about describing the project to anyone else, I wonder if I’ll be the only one who ever finds it fascinating. But I can’t worry about that now. 

At this stage, the Silas Project is a sprawling, untidy mess, chapters inconsistent in terms of length or voice, the whole of Part One so rough overall that I think I have never written anything in my life more in need of deep, extensive editing – and by someone other than me! But that’s another thing I can’t think too much about right now. Right now the point is to keep pushing through, keep moving forward, from concept to first draft, however big a mess that might be.

 

Partisan Politics

 

I thought of beginning with politics and ending with Peasy, saving the best for last, but then I thought I’d probably lose the majority of you right off the bat if I started with politics. And much as I’d like to have it out of my life, too, on it goes, like the coronavirus….

 

Poor Donald Trump! The voice in his head, his father’s voice, tells him that if loses at anything, he’s a loser, and if he’s a loser, he’s worthless, he’s nobody. So while he lost the November election, he cannot admit it. He cannot bring himself to concede. Perhaps he truly cannot believe he lost. Who the hell knows? 

 

Despite his claim to be a “stable genius,” it’s been clear since his days on the campaign trail that the 45^th president was and is emotionally and mentally unsuited for the job of leading the world’s most powerful country. He has been, in office, what he always was:  a weak, immature, morally stunted individual, unable to accept responsibility or live in truth. Over and over he has disgraced his office with public complaining, whining, threatening and blaming; time and again he has invented alternative fantasy “realities,” denying even his own well-documented and recorded statements; day after day, as each new outrage emanating from the White House disrespected American citizens and insulted reason itself, we said surely we had now heard “the worst” – and yet the outrages, the insults, the disrespect never slowed, let alone stopped.

 

Mental instability is a tragedy, but that of Donald Trump, 45^thpresident of the United States of America, is not his personal tragedy, for he does not recognize it. He does not mourn his errors or lament his shortcomings. Rather, the tragedy of his presidency is suffered by the American people, his supporters no less than his opponents and critics.

 

I understand that there are people so wedded to a particular party that they cannot bring themselves to vote otherwise, regardless of the candidate put forward. I recognize the fact that some Americans are single-issue voters and would sacrifice every other value for the sake of the one issue they hold dearest. I even realize that some voters think “character” should not be taken into account when electing politicians. The last group probably describe themselves as “hard-headed realists.” What has saved us up until recently has been a general faith in our electoral system and a general consensus on facts. 

 

The United States is unique among the world’s democracies in the length of time provided by our Constitution for the transition from the outgoing to the incoming administration. … In the two and one-half months from election to inauguration, the president-elect and his team must choose key White House officials and senior appointees for the cabinet and subcabinet; set a course for foreign policy; develop a domestic agenda and budget; and write an inaugural address summing up all this for the nation and the world. And this is happening when the president-elect and his team, giddy with victory but exhausted from the campaign, are under scrutiny as never before for clues about the new administration. 

 

-      President Carter: The White House Years, by Stuart E. Eizenstat

 

How long has it been, for how much of my life is it that I have found the transition period as nerve-wracking as the months of campaigning that preceded it? And has any American transition of executive power ever been as fraught with anxiety as what we are going through this January 2021?

 

But all responsibility for the present attacks on American democracy cannot be laid at the outgoing president’s door. Republican representatives and senators in Congress have had four years to come to grips with the truth -- that their emperor wears no gorgeous robes, i.e., that he is dangerously delusional. A single naked madman could not bring this country to its knees. The support of a greedy, powerful and yet still power-hungry majority leader in the Senate, however, has tipped the scale, and now other senators, all of whom should know better, are joining the howling mob and saying they will refuse to confirm the results of the Electoral College when those results are presented to them tomorrow. I am furious and ashamed to see that the U.S. Representative from my home district in Michigan is among this crowd of unprincipled rebels. Party of “law and order”? Adherence to the Constitution? Clearly, they’ve thrown all that overboard.

 

The Republican Party’s disdain for democracy is nothing new, but never has it been so shamelessly naked as in their present efforts to overturn election results that even honest officials from their own party, from local and county boards to governors to William Barr, recent Attorney General, have scrutinized repeatedly, finding no evidence whatsoever of the “widespread fraud” that the delusional president continues to argue “cheated” him of victory. Senators who compose the rebellious cabal (can it be a cabal if they are public rather than secret?) say they are responding to “legitimate concerns” about the election results. As an acquaintance of mine points out, the “concerns” largely originate with the man in the White House who lost his bid for re-election and cannot resist feeding the fears of his “base,” those who put him in office four years ago. 

 

Feeding irrational fears, repeating and promoting falsehoods, dividing Americans, trashing our most cherished institutions – if this country and the world survive long enough, history is not going to cut the rebel senators much if any slack for selling their souls in 2020 and 2021. Their leader may be crazy, but what is their excuse? 

 

The Trail Beckons

 

Fall, like spring and summer, is more continuous change than steady state. Maples and birches demand that we monitor their changes with our attention, it seems, while other trees and plants surprise us later, every year: deep carmine osiers, yellow asparagus, scarlet Virginia creeper, golden tamarack, and the buttered-toast-dripping-honey leaves of beeches. 

Colors shout in the sunshine and gleam in the rain before fading almost imperceptibly against the darkening skies and winds that tear foliage from branches to leave them bare against the clouds.

Does autumn bring forth your wanderlust or tempt you indoors with cocoa and blankets and books? Perhaps it does both, and that’s when books of other people’s travels are so welcome. Armchair travel, vicarious adventure! Where would we be without it? 

 

…Two brothers uprooting themselves to seek adventure or a better life together was a pretty typical Oregon Trail pairing, and our resemblance to the nineteenth-century pioneers was significant. Nick was an injured, unemployed construction worker in the midst of a deep recession in home building in Maine. As a print journalist I typified an American character type that had been familiar since the industrial revolution – the worker with redundant, antiquated skills displaced by technological change. We were going to see the elephant because there wasn’t much else going on for us at home. 

 

-      Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

 

I’ll explain “seeing the elephant” in a minute.

First, though, I have to admit that when I picked this book up just after finishing Crazy Horse, by Mari Sandoz, I wasn’t sure I would find the story congenial. Not only does Buck open his story with some background on the Oregon Trail, but the map also showed me place names I’d encountered in the Sandoz book: Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Fort Fetterman. And reading of 400,000 pioneers, many of whom “would never have made it past Kansas” without the assistance of Native American guides, I thought of Crazy Horse and his friends, dismayed by disappearing game (disappearance that brought great hunger) but confident that the pioneers would keep moving, on their way to somewhere faraway. I also took exception to the author’s claim that this was the largest human migration in world history, having read so recently The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson, telling of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North, six million people migrating over the period 1916-1970.

 

Still, the story of two brothers setting out is a story of our time, not history, and such an unlikely and challenging modern journey that I set my doubts to one side and read on.

 

The phrase “seeing the elephant,” new to me, was apparently one 19^th-century pioneers used all the time. The “elephant” in letters and journals of the time seemed at first to refer to the hugeness of the plains, later to the dangers to life that crossing the plains involved, the great American adventure of its time captured and reduced poetically to its lowest terms in the malleable elephant cliché.

 

In the year 1958, while conventional suburban American children were gyrating with hula hoops in their backyards, Rinker Buck’s father took his family on an epic vacation. The author was only seven years old when the family set out on a 300-mile odyssey in a Mennonite wagon pulled by a team of draft horses, with a saddle horse tied on and following behind, traveling from an old New Jersey farm by way of old roads and historic sites of Pennsylvania and back home again, and that little seven-year-old boy was entrusted with the task of riding on ahead of the wagon in the late afternoon to locate a likely overnight campsite! What a dream! Who else but someone with this childhood memory would come up with a scheme to take a wagon and team of mules from Missouri to Oregon? And who else but a brother from that original trip would be so eager to sign on to such a crazy scheme?

 

So I know “where the story is going” geographically, but what may happen along the way I have no idea. Anyway, I’m hooked. Nothing like a wacky travel narrative for escape from the daily news cycle....

A busy bookstore is always gratifying to a bookseller, and my next-to-last Saturday in the bookstore was a busy one, but it’s a rare day that doesn’t allow dipping into some as-yet-unread book, and I’d had Michelle Obama’s Becoming set aside for several days. The very first pages of that book then hooked me, and a day later, having set aside the Oregon Trail for the First Lady, I was almost halfway through Michelle Obama’s story. What a refreshingly honest, down-to-earth, and yet thoughtful, absolutely elegant woman!

 

“They’re Chicago people,” the Artist reminded me (as if I might have forgotten). “They might very well walk into Dog Ears someday.” Wouldn’t that be something? 

 

But now it’s Sunday, and I’ve come to Dog Ears Books myself for a couple of afternoon hours, because next Saturday, Halloween, October 31, will be my last bookstore of the 2020 season! What a weird, strange year it has been, in the book business as in every other part of American life (as well as life beyond our own shores). Usually open on May 15, this year it was July 1 before the store was open to public browsing and buying for other than special order customers. We have all had to mask up for in-person meetings, with friends and strangers alike. Manufacturing and distribution chains for books were disrupted along with so many others; special summer events were cancelled; some authors had new book releases pushed off until 2021. And yet we persisted! We went forward with what we had, which was (as always) plenty of wonderful old books and lots of wonderful new ones, as well. Everyone behaved very well. It was a good season. 

 

Already I’ve had forward-thinking customers come in to stock up on winter reading, one man filling two whole grocery bags, others content with tall stacks of books. I welcome, wholeheartedly, all long-time and new customers this coming week! Many books here are calling out to go to new homes as holiday gifts (hint, hint). 

I will miss you all in my bookstore during my months of seasonal retirement, but I’ll remind you now that there are other bookstores here Up North, and while I’m gone I urge you to "shop my 'competition.'” Really? Yes, of course! One thing I have always absolutely loved about being an independent bookseller (one thing among many, of course) is that we booksellers – real indie types -- do not generally regard one another as competition. Customers sometimes make reference to “your competition down the road,” but in our small, fiercely independent shops -- shops that reflect our own personalities and interests as well as the region where we live and work – we see and treat each other as colleagues. It is a collegial line of work. If we don’t have something in stock, we send the customer for that book to someone else’s shop, sometimes even calling ahead to see if the book the customer wants is on hand – which I did only yesterday, in fact. We’re all on a cordial, first-name basis. We know each other, and we like each other. We are real people. And we all want all the others to succeed. 

 

So please buy new books from Leelanau Books in Leland, Bay Books in Suttons Bay, Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, and Horizon Books in Traverse City. If you're a lover of old books, visit Landmark Books in Traverse City, and if Paul doesn’t have what you're looking for and you must shop online, here are some alternatives to the Online Behemoth.

 

Has the idea of an independent bookstore yet to become important to you? Take a look here. Community, curation, convenience. My place won’t be convenient while it's closed for the winter, but Dog Ears Books has always been about a curated collection, and our community commitment has only grown stronger over the years.

 

And we certainly expect to re-open Dog Ears Books in 2021 – I hope by May 15^th. One thing I can safely say, after over 27 years in business, is that I have lived up to the promise I made an earlier Northport landlord long ago: “I’m in it for the long haul.” And in retrospect 27 years have flown by. -- Someone the other day wished me another 27, which is rather more than I wish for myself, but I do hope and plan to be back in 2021. 

So come down to Waukazoo Street this week! We are here now! And really, isn’t that all that any of us can ever say with certainty?