Could I Become a Stoic?

 

Monday the sun shone in Northport.

Long ago, back in the Middle Ages of my life—my early Middle Ages, that is—in the university office where I worked for a while there was a faculty member whose positive attitude and relentless good cheer bordered on mania. Over time I came to appreciate Jack's irrepressible good humor but could not buy into his oft-proclaimed belief that “There are no problems! Only opportunities!” 

 

Now, however, in early old age, I find myself, maybe, being won over to that way of thinking. 

Easier to feel hopeful when the sun is shining --

My change of mind and heart probably began before the death of my husband, although that enormous loss certainly made everything else I might have named a “problem” earlier in life seem trivial by comparison. As Jamie Raskin wrote of the death of his son by suicide at age 25, what was there to fear, now that the worst had already happened? And yet, even before that had come a cascade of crises, each to be met with calm and resolve, because no situation is helped by panic. Driving the Artist to the ER or calling for an ambulance, waiting out a surgery, living through days when he was “unresponsive” (hospital staff avoided using the word coma, until I finally asked if that’s what it was) were all situations that called on me to respond with something other than screaming hysteria. I had no choice but to rise to each difficult occasion and deal with it as it was. I could hardly welcome those situations as “opportunities,” and even now it’s a stretch to think of them that way, but they definitely demanded that I stretch in other ways. 

 

—But that might not have been the start, either, because over previous years I had gradually managed to leave behind, for the most part, my younger, reactive, self-dramatizing, often self-pitying and resentful self. Having a child and going back to work and navigating those paths simultaneously demanded that I deal with the world as a grownup, although growing up was for me, as it is for most of us (I think), a lifetime process. I should say it is, because I hope to keep growing as long as I live.

 

Growth. Rarely steady. Gradual but also subject to plateaus, to backslidings, to rushes ahead and then stalls. Sometimes to simple determined and dogged trudging forward.

On Wednesday, winter came back.

Living alone (with a dog, thank heaven!) has given me a fair share of opportunities for growth. Losing my billfold on a cross-country trip (which meant traveling without driver’s license and credit card); flat tire in Kansas on another trek; coming home to a failed septic pump that had to be replaced; having the farmhouse furnace give up the ghost (fortunately, that happened in the spring and not in the dead of winter)—all were unwelcome and unchosen situations that, nevertheless, had to met head-on. 

Scary time: when my puppy had a fever!

Another piece of the adult puzzle I had discovered back in the late 1980s was that taking action was empowering, all by itself, regardless of results. Does that sound obvious? The thing is, I didn’t have to take monumental action or even, all the time, action having anything to do with the unwanted situation. Sometimes it was as simple as pulling my head out from underneath the covers and sweeping dust bunnies out from underneath the bed. Looking back on my days of frenetic housekeeping in the face of situations beyond my control, I see that I was proving to myself that I was not helpless. I might have been only a pawn in their game, but in my own game I was the queen!

 

In the course of the past year, my fourth as a widow, more or less adjusted to that inescapable reality, I was helped not only by supportive friends and family and the companionship of my dog but also by the business I started back in 1993, little foreseeing then how vital it would be to my future life. My bookshop provides me with social life, morale support (and that is not a typo: I insist on morale, rather than moral for the real meaning of the phrase), and with daily literary and intellectual and, yes, casual, friendly conversations, as well as not only the excuse but the necessity of ordering new books on a regular basis.

 

I haven’t changed the subject.

 

Last year I ordered a book by Mel Robbins, Let Them, because I had gotten so much out of her various short video clips that I wanted to share her ideas with others. 

While reorganizing my spices at home on Tuesday this week (a dismal, rainy day), I listened to a conversation between Robbins and the “Daily Stoic” podcaster, Ryan Holiday, intrigued to hear him compare what Robbins calls her “Let Them theory” to stoicism, as both are about accepting what you cannot change. (Sounds like AA, doesn’t it?) Robbins takes pains to assure readers and listeners and viewers that she is not counseling the acceptance of disrespect or abuse. You don’t have to stay in a job forever with a disrespectful boss (although you might have to stay until you find something else), and you don’t have to stay in an abusive relationship with someone who puts no value on you, only on what he can get out of you. (Change pronouns as necessary for different situations.) What you are accepting is reality, the fact that you cannot change anyone but yourself, and that no one else is going to change because you would like them better a different way. 

 

First you do the “Let Them” step, and then, crucially, comes the “Let Me” step, where you decide what you will do in response to someone else's behavior that you don't like. It won’t be attempting to change that other person. You’ve already realized you have no power to do that. What you have power over is your response. In this conversation with Ryan Holiday, Robbins says you don’t even have to buy her book! She'll tell you what’s in it! What I have written here is my nutshell version.

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, the sixteenth emperor of Rome, who lived from 121 to 180 BCE, has been having a massive resurgence in popularity in 21^st-century America, and it’s not hard to understand the reasons for that. The long, gradual “fall” of the Roman Empire was already underway when the Stoic emperor (adopted, not born, into a family of aristocrats) came to power. War and conflict, the Antonine Plague and famine were some of the hardships in Rome during the 16th emperor's reign. He knew some tough times and had advice for getting through them.

 

As an experiment, I open the Meditations at random, and there on page 75 is a pithy bit of advice: 

 

Don’t align your thinking with that of a man who’s dishonoring you. Don’t think as he wants you to think, but see things as they truly are.

 

I close the book and open it once more, again at random: 

 

Perfection of character lies in this: to live each day as though it were your last, without turmoil, without listlessness, and without pretense. 

 

I can’t say I have ever studied Marcus Aurelius, and it’s been years since I read Epictetus, but clearly the times are nudging me in the direction of the Stoics, and so this week, in that spirit, and because each day could be my last, I have been focusing on telling people clearly how important they are to me, in ways large and small. As one of Northport’s beloved elders, Reverend Marshall Collins, told me once while we were still next-door business neighbors, “I’m giving you flowers while you’re alive.” (A good friend of his had recently died, and he was reflecting on all the flowers at the funeral.) Too often we think that surely people already know that we value them, but even our closest friends and family, secure in our love for them, get a boost from hearing appreciation put into words. I told our postmaster in Northport how much I love the post office and gave her a big hug! “Spread the word! These are strange times!” she urged, and I told her I do sing the praises of the USPS, often.

 

A last word today in closing: “Let Them” does not have to mean disengaging from politics. Don't waste your time and mental energy on conversations and activities that make you feel powerless, in politics or anywhere else, but please take a stand for kindness and justice and law (the real kind of law, with features like due process!), if you can find it within yourself to do so (here are some suggestions from Robert Reich), because—just as Rome was not built in a day, neither did it fall in a day.

 

Don’t act as if you were going to live for ten thousand years. Fate is hanging over your head. While you live—while you can—be a good man.

 

Man or woman, be a good person--while you can!

Gift from and memento of that good man,
Rev. Marshall Collins - 
Today's post is dedicated to him.

Our World Today

Sun in the morning, moon at night

Sunrise (almost) over Northport harbor

We humans pay more attention to sunrises and sunsets than to the rising and setting of the moon, and that only makes sense, since our planet is dependent on the sun for light and warmth, and without it earth would be lifeless. There would be no us.

 

The moon, on the other hand, we could live without, right? We only see it, with no light of its own, because it reflects sunlight, and when earth blocks the path of that sunlight and the moon is “dark,” invisible to us, how much does the darkness of the moon change our daily lives? It’s only a satellite. 

 

And yet, I love a moonrise. It reminds me of summer nights when friends used to visit and we all (younger then) sat outdoors and watched the moon come up over the meadow. These nights it still comes up over the meadow and sets behind my big barn, but the other evening I drove to higher ground to watch the moon come up and the sun go down.

Moonrise on Saturday evening

Sunset afterglow

This is the little world of my country neighborhood, a peaceful place, and we have been having a beautiful, balmy fall. I didn’t even mind the rain on Monday, perfectly timed to begin at the end of Sunny’s and my agility session with our coach and then gently watering the rooted viburnum cuttings I’d gotten into the ground on Sunday afternoon. For me, the rain was perfectly timed.

Viburnum cutting in the ground

Sometimes forces we can’t control work out well in our favor, sometimes not. The onset of Monday’s rain worked out perfectly for Sunny and me, but not so well for the team that was supposed to follow us. 

 

 

About Trust (books mentioned in this section)

 

Do you have people in your life whom you trust? What does that mean to you, trusting someone? On one website I found with definitions of trust from people in a variety of disciplines, my favorite was this one from Brené Brown: 

 

Trust is defined as: choosing to make what’s important to you, vulnerable to the actions of someone else. Distrust is defined as: what I shared with you, is not safe with you.

 

In the novel Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman, the main character recalls the way her family life deteriorated after a road accident took the life of her sister and left Britt-Marie alive as an only child: Her father came home later and later, and her mother talked less and less, finally not at all. “They never spoke about the accident,” the author writes, “and, because they didn’t, they also couldn’t talk about anything else.” The death of a child, if it results in silence or blame, can also be the death of a marriage. 

 

In my own life, there have been at least a couple of times when someone (a man in both cases) ruled one particular subject out of bounds for discussion. It was not the same subject with the two men (one was personal, the other political), but both times it was a topic important to me and something I wanted, felt I needed—to explore and understand. 

 

Well, didn’t we have a lot of other mutual interests, other things to talk about? Certainly, in both cases, and yet in both cases I found the unilateral gag order chilling, which is why that sentence in the Backman book (you’ll find it on page 50 in the paperback edition) struck me with such force. Having one topic absolutely forbidden did not incline me to pursue other subjects with enthusiasm but rather to find other conversational partners who would not place limits on what I would be allowed to say.

 

My best friend is my best friend in large part (besides our history together) because I feel I can say anything to her. She doesn’t have to see everything just as I see it or agree with every position I take. Trust, as I understand it, does not demand total agreement or even complete understanding. It is, however, a willingness to hear and, if possible, to respond. 

 

Trust, for me—and anyone can make the first trusting move—creates room for dialogue in Martin Buber’s I-Thou sense. In this wonderful presentation by Ben Sax, he talks about taking off our armor. What a great way to put it! 

 

In another novel I read recently, What the Fireflies Knew, by Kai Harris, it was a father who died (of a drug overdose), and the child narrator remarks that her mother’s grief was so overwhelming that the mother had no room to deal with the grief of her daughters, who had lost their father. Again, a family death had become a forbidden topic, and the enforced silence damaged relationships. 

 

These limited examples of refusing dialogue on a particular subject don’t touch on other ways we may refuse trust. It’s a narrower focus that I address today. Obviously, we may fear that a certain person may harm us physically or take advantage of us financially or even betray a confidence. But Britt-Marie’s parents were not concerned that she would tell someone else about her sister’s death: Everyone already knew about their loss. You might say they had been hurt too badly to open themselves up to the possibility of further hurt by letting themselves feel their pain. (A losing proposition!) Kenyatta’s mother, in the second novel, takes a more positive step, going into therapy to deal with her loss so she can get back to mothering her children. 

 

“Feeling safe” with someone does not have to mean entrusting that person with a secret. Values important to me are not secret. Far from it. You are reading about them here. Actually, I think that “feeling safe” can be at least as much a matter of self-confidence as of trust in another, but that’s another large topic, one I won’t get into today.

 

Trust isn’t something we owe anyone else. (It’s more than respecting someone’s personhood.) If you are leery of trusting faceless strangers online, that just makes sense. Not giving someone a blank check, not handing over your car keys to a drunken friend—that’s simple prudence. And anyone who attempts to force your confidence is unlikely to be someone you’ll trust very far, if you're anything like me. 

 

There may be people, though, who would say it’s better, it’s ideal, to trust everyone. I can’t go that far. But I will stick my neck out to trust those I love and admire, and it’s important to me that they reciprocate so we can see and hear each other.

 

Color is coming on.

The larger scene

 

I have said before in this space that I am a lucky woman, despite having lost the love of my life. I live in a beautiful place and have what feels like meaningful work. (I believe in books!) I have in my life family, friends, a dog, many books, and lots of outdoor space to explore, thanks to continuing health. I have good neighbors. Given all these blessings, it’s not difficult for me most of the time to heed the wish, “Have a good day!” 

 

Because the majority of the inventory in my shop’s curated collection are used books, I am often asked, “Where do you get all your books?” and here’s my answer: I order most of my new books from Ingram, a national distributor, and a few I can’t get that way from self-published authors or small presses that don’t deal with Ingram, but the used books generally come to me. After over 32 years in the business, people with “too many books” either know me or easily find out that I’m here. Some of these books I buy outright, if they meet my criteria and budget; a very limited few I take on consignment; I frequently offer trade credit; sometimes, yes, books are simply given to me; but some I turn away (musty or otherwise unsalable), though always thanking the person who brought them in for thinking of me. However the books come to me, though, costly or free, I invest my judgment and my time.

The other day I was asked a different question, and the wording of the query landed strangely on my ear: “Where do you get your opinions?” Beg pardon? I don’t shop for opinions or buy them wholesale or pick them up at a social media thrift shop. If I did, they wouldn’t be “mine,” would they? I form my opinions in part from my own limited experience but also from facts at my disposal, which are generally also at the disposal of anyone willing to spend the time gathering and weighing information from reliable sources. 

Sunny's opinion: It's playtime!

My questioner was asking about political opinions, and I should say that his opinions and mine are at variance, to put it mildly. But as I told him, facts about current events are readily available. Sometimes we have to seek them out—no single source of news will present all the available facts—but they are there to be seen and heard. 

 

For example, the president of the United States speaks, and his rambling, insulting, threatening words of hate and derision are there on radio, television, and online video to be heard. ICE is ordered out, masked, in full tactical gear, into neighborhoods, and what they do is there, out in the open, to be seen, televised, and disseminated. Those words and actions are not my opinion. Now the governor of Texas has volunteered his National Guard troops and sent them to Chicago, against the wishes of the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois. My very negative opinion is my judgment of those words and actions, combined with American values taught me from childhood. 

 

Where does my questioner get his facts? Which issues does he consider important, and how does he weigh the relative importance of the vast variety of important issues facing us today? Does he see immigrants and Democrats as enemies of the United States? (The president holds and encourages such a view.) Does he envision one-party rule as a solution to current divisions? 

 

Supporters of the current administration in Washington love to talk about “the law” when they discuss immigration. They want people to apply for citizenship through legal channels and “wait their turn.” I’m not sure how they feel about anyone seeking asylum. Usually it’s just “Do it the legal way!” -- end of story; that’s all she wrote. Adults brought here as children? Ship ‘em back to where they were born, even if they don’t speak the language, and let ‘em apply from there! Obey the law! But when it comes to the president following the law—NOT; or the president governing according to the Constitution—NOT; or the president pursuing frivolous, baseless lawsuits against a newspaper for criticizing him or against a judge for ruling against him—when it comes to a felon convicted on 34 counts sitting in the Oval Office rather than in prison, an American president claiming to be above the law—there these same vociferous “law and order” folks see no problem. Doesn't it hurt their brains to maintain belief in such a blatant contradiction? 

 

They also like to say our country is not a democracy but a republic. A republic? (Not a democratic republic?) But somehow it’s okay to send National Guard troops from the State of Texas to the State of Oregon when Oregon doesn’t want them? Where are the rights of Oregon when the U.S. president and Texas governor can conspire against Oregon? Read about it from a far-from-unbiased news source.

 

“We support law enforcement,” they say. They don’t add, “as long as the law is not applied to ‘our side,’” but how else can their talk of support for the rule of law be understood, given the many illegal outrages on which they remain silent?

Now the president, the same man who incited his followers to storm the capitol on January 6, 2022, to overturn an election he lost, is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to place Chicago under military control. The irony is unsurpassable.  

As for out-and-out corruption, read how a true conservative sees it. Can you read this without wanting to vomit? Without thinking the words BANANA REPUBLIC? I can't.

 

How to Remain Sane

 

I should put a question mark there. How do we face up to what's happening and not lose our sanity or our courage? Again, I live in a beautiful place, and if I were to close my eyes to the rest of the country I could pretend that I am living in Paradise, but innocent people in this country are being detained without cause in my name; children in this country are being separated from parents in my name; hard-working government workers are losing their jobs and the health coverage in my name; and slaughter continues in Gaza in my name. The list goes on and on. Because I am an American, what my country does it does in my name, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I cannot enjoy the benefits and privileges of citizenship in this country and wash my hands of its ongoing crimes as if they have nothing to do with me. Like it or not, I am implicated. 

 

It’s a narrow, wobbly walk from one day to the next, remaining aware and informed and vigilant and taking responsibility, on the one hand, while at the same time being grateful for the gifts of life, maintaining vital, loving relationships, and continuing to work and hope for a better tomorrow. I wake in the dark with a torn and lacerated heart but take up my hope and resolve again when morning comes because I love my country!

Salute and gratitude today to Governor J.B. Pritzger of Illinois. 

  

¡NUNCA TE RINDAS!

Never give up!

P.S. to those who need a refresher course in geography: Chicago is not on the border with any other country. Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that lies wholly in the U.S. Look it up. You might start here, but any map or atlas will show the same thing. Border Patrol operating in Chicago, therefore, is way out of its jurisdiction, although I see they have redrawn the maps to show something very different.

The opinions here are mine.
You can verify the facts yourself.

Another August Winding Down

I have had a new idea (which in itself is refreshing, so many old ones emerging for another go at me most of the time): instead of a traditional book review format, I will try addressing the author of a book directly. My first trial balloon will begin today's post.

Dear Author #1: Jack Myette

 

Dear Mr. Myette,

 

Let me begin by thanking you for your 25 years of service in the Michigan prison system and for holding onto your values during that quarter of a century. There are easier ways to have a regular paycheck, but you did it the hard way.

 

For a while I found the going rough in your book, Prison: The Inside Story. The stories were so bleak! You don’t sugarcoat your experiences or those of the prison inmates, that’s for sure. I was eager to get to the Transforming Lives [as an Officer and Educator] part but didn’t want to skip ahead, so I set the book aside for a few days and then returned to finish it.

 

What I have been thinking about most since reading your book—the question that plague many of us—is why there isn’t more education in prisons, given the clear results shown in lowered rates of recidivism. Let me put the question another way: Why don’t statistics on education and recividism persuade more people that changing lives in prison is a good thing?

 

(Here are some overall statistics on prisons for my other readers, numbers that should give all Americans pause. The graphs are easy to read. Take a look, friends.)

 

Jack, you gave one part of the answer to my question in your book: “the old ‘They ain’t got nothin comin’” attitude that you found among some (many?) prison employees, but I know it is widespread among the general nonincarcerated population, as well. I had community college students who thought that whatever horrible thing happened to prisoners behind bars was in some way “deserved” and part of their punishment; that prisoners should have no rights; that they certainly should have no “privileges,” including education. Of the three aims of incarceration—deterrence, reformation, and retribution—far too many Americans focus solely on retribution. (Not as in a simple “eye for an eye” fashion, either. Is the idea of proportion too subtle to be grasped?)

 

So retribution (however disproportional) is one part of the answer, and saving taxpayer dollars seems a minor concern, as the people intent on causing maximum suffering to criminals don’t care if retribution costs more than reform. They probably don’t care about recidivism, either, since the former inmate who returns to a life of crime only proves to these folks that he was worthless all along. Those who change prisoners’ lives, on the other hand, are a challenge to stubbornly closed minds.

 

But I think there is another, less obvious reason for not addressing recividism in any meaningful way, and that has to do with money. It has to do with capitalism. 

 

I grew up in a town that boasted a maximum security prison. Back in the postwar 1950s, that prison had its own farm and raised its own food. You note that the Traverse City State Hospital also had its own farm, and your solution to overcrowded prisons and also homelessness and mental illness is to “turn back the hands of time,” to make prisons and mental hospitals once again “self-sufficient,” with “strong educational and vocational programs….”

 

The problem I see with the solution you propose is that prisons are a huge market just begging to be captured—a  captive market audience, if you will, that business loves tapping. It’s a little like your prison school principal who didn’t want student inmates graduating, because he “received kudos for the number of students in school,” and every student who graduated was one fewer student in school, so a successful student prisoner took away from his numbers! 

 

How, how sad that music was taken away from your students! Not only did your graduation rate subsequently fall, but the whole calming and basically human aspect of music was lost to the classroom and the students. 

 

Back to my point about numbers, however—. As more and more prison services are privatized, as whole prisons are privatized, why would the businesses making money from incarceration want to see fewer people in the system? A successful prison, a prison that was not a revolving door but that returned reformed criminals to society—that prison, while certainly cutting costs, would also be cutting away its own future profits. 

 

As long as prison populations are seen by for-profit business as fertile ground for investment, and as long as government is willing to relinquish responsibility for those it imprisons and to pay private business to take on the job, I see limited motivation for prisons to reduce recidivism. So step #1 has to be reversing and eliminating privatization of prisons and prison services. 

 

Step #2, then, would be tackling that extremely knotty problem of retribution-only points of view, both among prison employees and among the American public at large. 

 

When my Contemporary Ethical Dilemmas class discussed capital punishment, a number of students voiced the opinion that they would want death for anyone who murdered someone they loved. They imagined themselves as parents of a murder victim. None of them, until prompted by a written assignment, ever imagined themselves as the parent of a murderer. And yet, every murdered had parents and was once a child.

 

There are a lot of shoes we are reluctant to walk a mile in, but you have come closer to doing that than most of us, so thank you for sharing your memories and insights.

 

 

News From the Near Neighborhood

Tiny asters are left of cattail.

 

On Sunday I noticed the season’s first blooming asters (keystone pollinator flowers), tiny pale lavender flowers upstaged by yellow goldenrod (also a keystone pollinator flower), pink Joe Pye-weed, and the startling blue of chicory flowers in the morning sun. Clouds have been spectacular in recent mornings, too.

It's fresh corn and tomato season, back-to-school time, dark coming earlier and daylight coming later. Still, I am not eager to “fall back.” Too much remains to do, indoors and outdoors—more jam to make and get into jars, hummingbirds and bees and goldfinches to watch as they buzz and weave and swoop among the thistles, still grass to mow, dinners with friends on the porch to arrange, always books to read, fun to have with dogs, and on and on and on. 

 

Looking Across the Miles

 

Retributive and preemptive punitive actions continue to be taken by the current administration in Washington, D.C., against Americans who have dared to voice disagreement with the president. Friday it was an FBI raid on John Bolton’s home that the Wall Street Journal (hardly a “pinko” news source) called part of a “vendetta campaign” and “revenge” on the part of the president. It is completely mystifying and outright heartbreaking to see the people who worried so vocally for years and years about “creeping socialism” seemingly unconcerned about galloping fascism, a term I do not throw around lightly. Are these complacent folks just looking the other way? Will they claim later that they were in Iceland and didn’t see it happening?

 

The latest executive order from the White House (as I type these lines on Monday), going against the Supreme Court majority that included conservative Anthony Scalia, calls for a one-year jail sentence for anyone burning an American flag. The president holds the flag sacred as a symbol at the same time that he desecrates and denies American history and values. What, one wonders, does the flag symbolize to him, if not our history and values, freedom and the rule of law? Poor flag! Poor stars and stripes, to be so used! But it is hardly the first time and will not be the last that a scoundrel has wrapped himself in his country's flag.

 

No, I cannot imagine burning the flag myself. I don’t even like to see those little ones on sticks in rows in the ground, because all too frequently they fall over or the wind blows them down, and the flag is never supposed to touch the ground. (If you’re going to display it, do it right.) Do not mistake me! I am not in favor of flag-burning! But I am even less in favor of a lawless executive persecuting those whose views differ from his own. ¿Claro?

 

 

Perspective 

 

Early in the morning, before what can be called “first light” but when dark isn’t quite as deep as it was 30 minutes earlier, I think about the long sweep of history, about nights and days hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and how the coming morning, now almost here, is not so much as the blink of an eye in that vast time canvas. There have been upheavals—movements of land and sea, advancing and retreating glaciers, extinctions and evolutions—that have left their mark in the rocky bones of the earth, but my life will not be such, and neither will the lives of any single person alive today. 

 

At this point, Pompeii comes to mind, and that feels like a lit candle, because it wasn’t the views of those doomed people on law or religion or ethics that survived them but only random mundane moments of their lives, frozen by a tsunami of ash. And so, here I am, in a moment of my life: coffee mug on a table surface next to me, dog in her typical resting croissant shape on my other side, book in my hands. We see the Pompeiians caught in one frozen moment but not in their preceding moments. We don’t hear their conversations or see the daylight or darkening sky they may have seen. Their thoughts, whatever they were thinking before time came to an end for them, were completely erased. 

 

We don’t feel like Pompeiians, though, do we? We write our journals, publish our books, make our movies and podcasts, and hope we can somehow, in some small way, influence the direction of the future, though the unintentional and unthinking ways we daily contribute to that future are much more likely to be effective. But whatever course the future takes, we will all one day be gone.

 

Do you find that long view depressing? Does it seem to illustrate meaninglessness? 

I don’t see it that way. I find the long perspective calming. For me, it makes the present brighter and clearer and more precious—lamplight a pool of miraculous presence against the dark masses of trees outside the window, my dog’s warm, aromatic presence the gift of now, this moment in which we are both alive. The memory of another moment, from only the evening before, comes to mind: a viceroy butterfly motionless on a blackberry vine. And for that moment and this, for the miracle of life, my heart swells in gratitude.

Why Do I Bother?

It's been a spectacular fall

Why do I bother blogging? It takes a lot of time and energy to put together a halfway decent post, whether or not photographs are included, and without an editor or proof-reader I’m always sticking my neck out even further. My handful of readers, for all I know, may shake their heads in wonderment at typos and infelicitous turns of expression, not to mention the high horses I sometimes mount and ride to a lather. “Why does she bother?” they may be asking themselves, and sometimes I ask myself the same question. It isn’t as if I have thousands or even hundreds of readers a day. Between one and two hundred is more like it. And they are not all reading the most recent post, either. No, it isn’t “consumer demand” that keeps me going.

For that matter, why do I persevere in maintaining an independent bookstore in a small village at the end of a northern Michigan peninsula? Our town has a library. There’s a post office, too, where residents can pick up books and everything else they order by mail from online sellers who don’t have my bricks-and-mortar overhead but do have worldwide name recognition. How many people find their way into Dog Ears Books in Northport on any given weekday in late fall? And how many of those who drop in are open to the treasures on offer?

New middle-grade vampire series!

For the last two years, I have waged exhausting war on invasive autumn olive on the land around my house and barns. Why? There is no quick and easy way to eradicate this pest, and there is no way to insure that it will not return. In fact, it is certain to return. Across the highway from our driveway is a corner so thoroughly infested that it has become impenetrable, and every plant has berries, and every berry eaten by a bird contains a seed that will be dropped somewhere else. Down by the Happy Hour, three fields were cleared of autumn olive. Neighbors on the hill above us made the effort. It’s either very expensive or (for someone like me who can’t afford the expense) very laborious and time-consuming to address this issue, and many, by default, make a different choice, but if everyone in Leelanau County were to make an all-out effort against autumn olive, that effort would still have to continue into the future year after year.

Why do I bother? This is who I am. These are some of the things I do. Here I stand. What else can I say?

Don't forget Teresa Scollon's reading and discussion and book signing this coming Saturday, 3 p.m. at 106 Waukazoo. Author visits are one of the best parts of my bookstore life, and I'm eager to share them with you!

Asters and native grasses in meadow