Good News, Good Deeds, Neighbors

 

Saturday morning glory!

Happy News: Sunshine and Standing Up

Last Thursday was very cold, but it was also sunny. Friday, sunny morning, cloudy afternoon with heavy snow. Saturday, cold and sunny again. Two and a half sunny days in a three-day streak is something to write home about in January, but I am already home, so I’m writing it to all of you who are elsewhere to let you know what you’re missing in your winter perches in Arizona, New Mexico, Mexico, south Florida, etc. Now on Sunday, the first day of the year's shortest month, sunshine again! Sunshine on pristine, glistening, sparkling snow!

 

Sunny day, Sunny!

Do you envy those of us back here in northern Michigan? A friend sent me a link to a video about a 4-year-old girl who received a gift pony and whose parents allowed her to show the pony her bedroom. My friend asked me, “Are you jealous?” and I answered, “Yes!” But right now I wouldn’t be anywhere else these days than northern Michigan, because my little personal life here is very happy, outside of my anguish over attacks on democracy and the rule of law all over our country, and even there, more and more Americans are standing up and taking brave public positions, so that is reason to be encouraged. Or, as a friend would have it, enCOURAGEd.

 

Homemade sign. NOT a "paid protester"!

(Graphic design is obviously not my forte. There are more snow and protest images and thoughts, however, in my previous post.)

Happy Book News

In my work as a bookseller (one aspect of my little personal life), I was thrilled to hear on Saturday from Robert Carlos Fuentes, author of The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan, that his book has won a Michigan Notable Book Award for 2026. Carlos wanted to thank me again for nominating his book, but I told him all I had to do was to call the committee’s attention to it (which was my honor and privilege), and his book did all the rest. I’ll let you know when the author (from Lansing), whose story takes place in Lake Leelanau, will next be in Northport. Author Tim Mulherin, who spoke at Dog Ears Books in late 2025, also received an award for his book, This Magnetic North. “My” authors! Bravo!

So there was all that sunshine--my final count for the month of January was four and one-half days--and there was the wonderful Michigan Notable Book news.

 

Then, Serendipity: From Other Books

 

Surrounded by books, both at work and at home, it’s easy for me to open covers and turn pages at random and find just the words I need. In a volume called Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde, in an interview with poet Adrienne Rich, Lorde says, “You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for.” I find that wonderful! It’s when you are afraid that you need courage. It’s when life challenges your strength that you need to be strong, and you become strong. 

 

At home, from my favorite philosopher, I found these words:

 

Between the closed soul and the open soul there is the soul in process of opening. Between the immobility of a man seated and the motion of the same man running there is the act of getting up, the attitude he assumes when he rises.

 

-      Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

 

 

What We’re All Doing Here

In Minneapolis, citizens observe and video-record action in the streets; hold vigils and demonstrations; organize to shop for and delivery groceries to people afraid to leave their homes. Here in little Northport, far from the fray, we oldsters take turns standing outdoors with signs. We send checks. We use our platforms (this blog is one of mine; my bookstore is another) to share facts and support. A kindly bookshop customer brought me a piece of delicious homemade cake on Thursday, and I ran library errands for someone else. A cherry farmer keeps my driveway plowed, and I delivered a book order to a customer not feeling well enough to venture out. 

Friends and neighbors. And everyone in need is a neighbor, whether next door or a thousand miles away. Help however you can.

 

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

The Subject Is Strength

Keep Yourself Strong

 

My previous post on loving care was a reminder to myself as well as to my readers that we need to take care of ourselves, and a couple images of meals I made with spinach pointed directly (with an indirect nod to Popeye the Sailor that younger readers, if any, might have missed) to the importance of building strength. Iron and vitamin D really do improve muscular strength, mass, and function in older adults as well as young people. These days, with every good meal I prepare, I tell myself I am building reserves of strength for an uncertain future. After all, outside of the certainty of eventual death for each and every one of us, the truth is that our futures have always been and always will be uncertain, so don’t wait for tomorrow to start taking care of yourself.

 

Physical activity, mental stimulation, and contact with others is nourishing and important, too. Sometimes when I’m feeling discouraged, it’s hard for me to call a friend, because I don’t want to spread my discouragement to anyone else. If I make the call, though (and sometimes it isn’t until the next day, I admit), before we’ve been talking long, my friend and I transition from commiseration to laughter, and laughing together renews our strength. 

Our playing field

Sunny Juliet and I had some physical activity on a cold Monday, the outdoors made more inviting by the presence of blue sky and sunshine. Frisbee is mental stimulation as well as physical activity for my girl, and often her dear little face makes me laugh with joy.

 

 

A Fable From Aesop

 

Book nerd that I have always been, now that I live alone there is always a book on the dining table, and these days I've been turning to Aesop with my meals. 

As you can see, the cover is attractive, page illustrations charming, but the book itself is falling apart, literally, so I felt no guilt for liberating this shabby treasure from a box of bookstore donations and calling it my own. My 1846 edition is also safely out of copyright, so I’ll be sharing a few more of the 300 fables and illustrations in weeks to come. 

For today, here is “The Lion and the Three Bulls.”

You might wonder where in the world lions and bulls both occur. Facts about Aesop are elusive, and many believe he was not a real person at all. Other scholars place him in the 6^th century BCE and identify him as born enslaved and eventually freed. While his birthplace (if he was, in fact, born) remains an open question, one possibility proposed is Ethiopia, and surely cattle and lions both are part of the fauna of many African countries. I’m content with that speculation. What is most important about Aesop, anyway, are the stories and their lessons.

 

“The Lion and the Three Bulls” is a very brief fable with an obvious and simple lesson. Three bulls graze together in a pasture and are safe as long as they remain together. The lion dares not attack one bull with two other formidable defenders on the scene. When the bulls separate, however, the lion easily takes them on one at a time, and all three lose their lives. 

 

“Union is strength,” is the way my old 19^th-century Routledge volume sums up the fable’s lesson. 

 

Running with that idea--

 

The phrase and general idea of “United we stand! Divided we fall!” has a long history, from the New Testament (Matthew 3:25, Matthew 12:25, Luke 11:17) to Abraham Lincoln (“a house divided against itself”) to the official motto of the state of Kentucky (since 1942) and the flag of the state of Missouri. Going back to pre-Revolutionary times, we find a song by John Dickinson, “The Liberty Song,” with the words “Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” 

 

Never a sports fan, I learned something new when looking for the idea that we are “stronger together.” Those of you who do follow sports will be familiar with the name Walter Payton, running back for the Chicago Bears. Apparently, Payton’s most well-known words are these: “We are stronger together than we are alone.” This site includes many other wonderful Payton quotes. I'm glad to have learned about him!

 

Similar words were adopted in 2021 by the International Olympic Committee to honor teamwork and the unifying power of sports: “Faster, Higher, Stronger—Together.” Labor unions use such slogans for obvious reasons, pointing to the very reason for their, the unions’, existence. Team sports were not my forte, to put it mildly, and I've never belonged to a union (my paternal grandfather did), but I did play in orchestras for nine years, and an orchestra cannot make music except by making it together. Orchestral music is an ensemble production.

 

Maybe talk of strength in union makes you nervous? Irritates you? You say you’ve worked hard all your life and earned everything you have, with no help from anyone? The truth is that the most rugged individualist who clawed his way up the ladder of success did not spring full-blown out of nowhere but benefitted from a surrounding culture of knowledge and skill and law and examples built up over generations, in this country and others. We all inherit what others gathered and treasured for us before we were even born. Community is a much broader concept than communism, and you can have one without the other. The motto E pluribus unum dates back to 1776. Here's a case for returning to it.

 

Current Events

 

No, I am not going to get into details of the past week’s outrages. The observation I want to make is general. 

 

Most 21^st-century presidential candidates and presidents have vowed to be presidents “for all the people.” Tragically, the candidate who now sits in the Oval Office was not in tune with that popular promise and instead, while yet on the campaign trail, was already vowing vengeance. Retribution, not reconciliation, is his theme song. Now in office, he has wasted no time in making good on his threats.

 

(What is a threat? What is a promise? Do you see them as different? Why or why not?)

 

Calling journalists and Democrats and all Republicans who don’t fall in line with him “enemies,” today’s president encourages his loyalists to follow him in hating and demonizing, dividing rather than uniting. Why? Because keeping us divided distracts us from what everything else he and his henchmen are doing. Because keeping American citizens fighting among themselves lets the gangster billionaires take over. Because keeping us apart in information silos makes us weak. If Americans came together in defense of the rule of law, which "ultimately depends on the citizens" (go back and follow that link!), we would still have plenty of disagreements and plenty to debate and a lot on which to compromise, but surely we could stand united against the threat of autocracy. We would have strength in numbers. —And if our democracy fails to survive, none of the other disagreements will matter, anyway.

Right now, in this cold Michigan February, it's hard to see if and how Americans will ever come together again, isn’t it? But what a tragic waste of human thought and innovation and effort it would be if this country of ours were to slide into “absolute despotism” after being founded expressly to avoid such a fate!

 

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day, to cite the old cliché, and it didn’t fall in a single day, either. The current administration is less than a month old. The wrecking ball started swinging on Day 1, and there has been a lot of destruction already, but we don’t have to sit back and let it continue to happen. We need to remind our members of Congress, our elected representatives, that they took an oath to abide by and defend the Constitution of the United States, and they are not working for the people they supposedly represent if they are knuckling under to a president who would set it aside—or, worse yet, if they are actively aiding and abetting that set-aside.

 

So keep up your strength, lend your strength to others, and draw strength from others, too. I promise (or is it a threat?) more Aesop in the weeks ahead. Other books, too. And if you’re very, very good, more dog news and notes. That’s a promise.