No Sunrises, No Sunsets, Lots of Changes

Deborah Wesley photograph

Wildfires are currently burning (as of Wednesday morning) in the U.S. states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Washington, as well as in western Canadian provinces (from British Columbia to Newfoundland but mostly from western Ontario to the Pacific Ocean). Since prevailing winds blow west to east across North America, air quality in the Midwest and all the way to the eastern seaboard is affected. The only escape is indoors, but who wants to stay indoors all summer? Some people must; others of us are taking our chances, despite the occasional cough. (Don't scold, please! I won't live forever!) My two younger sisters from Illinois came for a visit, and we spent time outdoors each day. 

Three sisters -- yes, styles have changed, too.

My sister Deborah also spent considerable time spoiling Sunny Juliet—that is, tossing tennis balls out in the yard for a certain lucky dog girl to chase. When all three of us were outside, Sunny still brought her tennis balls to Auntie Deborah rather than to her dog mom. No fool, my Sunny!

I finished In the Merrimack Valley: A Farm Trilogy with a big sigh. Like The Vacation, by Carlos Fuentes, and This Magnetic North, by Tim Mulherin, Jane Brox’s book is a story of change. I guess that is the story of life, isn’t it? Change! I learned a few things in the Brox book, and one of those things is that big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), a native prairie grass I seeded into the edge of my meadow 25 years ago—a native grass, mind you, not an invasive alien—can nevertheless outcompete other plant species. Now I’m thinking maybe that’s what happened to those purple coneflowers that failed to appear last summer after a quarter-century. The little grey-headed coneflowers are holding their own, so far, but the purple ones have vanished. 

Gone with the wind! Here they were years ago.

These are still with me...

co-existing, for now, with big bluestem.

A meadow, a forest, even a roadside changes from year to year. About three years ago I noticed a little bright yellow flower blooming on the side of M-22 just north of Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern. Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) is a nitrogen-fixing legume, but it is invasive and aggressive, forming root mats that crowd out native plant roots, and this year I am noticing it blooming all up and down M-22. Spreading rapidly! So, pretty though it is, I will not be transplanting any to my meadow, which changes just gradually enough (except for the disappearance of purple coneflowers) that I manage to accept the differences from one year to the next. 

Birdsfoot trefoil

This Saturday (already!!!) is Northport’s annual dog parade—and how many does this make? My old Nikki was in the parade back in 1997 ("Mardi Growl”) and again in 1998 (“Treasures of King Mutt”).

Memorabilia! Priceless!

Our Sarah made one parade appearance. That year (2010, and you can find Bettie and Ben and Gracie and Sarah by following this link) my sister and her husband were visiting, along with our mother and their dog, Gracie, so Ben and Bettie each had charge of a dog while I stayed near my shop, watching the parade with our mother. Mother is gone, Gracie and Sarah are gone. More changes…. But the dog parade goes on, this year as “Bone Appétit.” (Note: That final 't' is silent.)

The pretty Bernese below made her first bookstore visit—first time in any bookshop—to Dog Ears! She will have moved on from Northport before parade time, but we commemorated her inaugural bookshop visit with a photo shoot.

My own general view of change (returning to my theme) is that I can handle it better if and when it’s gradual rather than overnight. How about you? 

Please come for guest author Tim Mulherin’s talk at Dog Ears Books on Wednesday, August 13, starting at 7 p.m. The topic will be changes in our own Northern Michigan! 

The book for August 13 event

Author Tim Mulherin

The season is moving right along

Days begin and end in smoky haze.

Smoke from Canadian fires makes for dramatic sunrises and sunsets, in addition to reduced air quality. I was going to say “daytime” air quality, but quality must be compromised at night, too, though we don't see the haze. 

In my neighborhood, cherry harvest is over for another year. The month of July is over everywhere! Admittedly, the season we anticipate all winter long, summer, always passes too quickly, but I can’t believe how this one is flying by—a blur, as I always tell people when they ask how my summer is going or, later, how my summer was.

Daisies at their peak bloom. This now is in the past.

For now we still have black-eyed Susans, and the raspberries aren’t quite finished, but already daisies are going to seed, Joe Pye-weed is blooming, and the first goldenrod is showing its bright color. Too soon! Too soon! 

Goldenrod already!

What Has Happened

The Friends of Leelanau Township Library wrapped up their summer author series with guest author Aaron Stander, who read from the 12th book in the very popular Sheriff Ray Elkins series, Smoke and Mirrors, set right here in what he calls “Cedar” County. Aaron shared with the audience some background on how he started writing murder mysteries (Elmore Leonard inspired him) and told stories of having an agent (briefly), looking for a publisher (one was interested until she learned the author's age), and—this was the happiest story—having a loyal, trustworthy editor.

"Did I overdress?" he asked me facetiously.

On the home front, Sunny and I had a visit from a couple old friends of mine and the new little dog of one of those friends. How apprehensive I was beforehand! Would my Naughty Barker terrorize the little rescue pup, who had been cagebound for most of his life until he came to live with Sandra? 

Little Milton, visiting dog

They were fine! They were better than fine! Milton was friendly and relaxed, and so was Sunny. My girl barked briefly at introductions, but soon the two dogs seemed to have been best dog buddies all their lives, and their easy-going happiness added to the humans’ enjoyment of the visit. Relieved? I was overjoyed! It was almost as if Sunny Juliet were channeling Sarah….

Getting acquainted...

Accepting...

Posing...

Resting, hanging out after play -- ah!

What’s Still to Come

Please disregard the erroneous headline in the Enterprise story on my upcoming bookstore event. Our township librarian was even more startled than I was to see the words “library event” (she thought she had forgotten something major!) above the story about Tim Mulherin’s August 13th appearance at Dog Ears Books. 

We’ll begin at 7 p.m. that Wednesday, but you might want to come a little earlier to be sure of a chair, because I’m thinking Tim’s topic is one that could draw a pretty big audience.

Even before that, Northport will have on Saturday, August 2, the annual Fly-In and pancake breakfast, and on Saturday, August 9, the annual and always highly anticipated dog parade. The theme this year is Bone Appétit (please note that final 't' is silent), and, please note, I am registering dog parade entries at Dog Ears Books.

AND my sisters are coming for a visit!!!

My Current Reading

I am still reading the book about Aristotle mentioned in my previous post, along with the other book I wrote about there, In the Merrimack Valley, but was sidetracked yesterday by a very small paperback that I haven't finished yet, an account written in prison—of what turned out to be his last days on earth—by Andrei Ivanovich Shingarev. He was arrested and thrown into prison, without trial, on November 27, 1917, and murdered in January 1918 after being transferred to a hospital. What is available online about Shingarev's life is sparse and conflicting. I have to say, however, that when he writes from prison that members of his political party, the Constitutional Democrats, were declared “enemies of the people” by the antidemocratic Bolsheviks, I thought of similar name-calling from our own White House in our own time. He also writes of lies and hypocrisy but is steadfast in his hope that the Russian people will eventually wake up and throw off those who betrayed their revolution. An empty hope, as it turned out, for that country. Will Americans be different?

Words he wrote from prison --

Which leads me to....

My Thoughts on Forgiveness (because it’s something I think about)

If someone hurts me but exhibits remorse and asks for forgiveness, I can forgive that person. If there is no remorse, no “Sorry!”—let alone a mending of the ways—I feel no compulsion to forgive. I can “move on” without it. Because you can’t make people care.

As I see it, though, forgiving wrongs done to others is an entirely different matter. That is not a matter of forgiveness for me. It is not up to any unharmed and uninvolved person but up to the person or persons harmed to offer forgiveness—if they are still alive and can find it in their hearts to forgive.

In this light, when I look at what is being done in the name of my country in today’s world, at members of our own government who are inflicting harm in our name within our borders and around the world, I not only hold them responsible but also those who put them in office and continue to support them. Can I ever forgive these people? I doubt I will ever be asked, but if I were, my answer would be no. I could forgive ignorance if the truth were inaccessible, but it is not. I could forgive honest mistakes if they were admitted and ways mended, but this is not happening. And even then, I myself cannot forgive violations of the rights and liberties and lives of other people, the ones wronged. 

People who support these violations and call themselves Christian (or Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist or Hindu or whatever!) can ask their God for forgiveness. Rudolf Vrba wrote a book about the Holocaust and the concentration camps and titled it I Cannot Forgive. As I see things (and I realize not everyone will agree), he was right not to.

And as the unforgivable continues to take place day after day, so does rallying around the golden calf. Where is Moses when we need him?

Never malicious —

That’s one of the things I love about the world of plants and sky and rock. Any of these can hurt you, but they never do so intentionally. Even poisonous plants bear us no malice. They are—and I appreciate this from the bottom of my heart—indifferent to human life. Storms may rage, winds may howl, and trees may crash to the ground, but they would do the same if we weren’t in their way, and if we are—well, that’s our bad luck. 

Nothing living lives forever.

Only one of our fellow living beings can push us off a mountain ledge. We may be alone and slip on loose rock, but the mountain is not responsible. There is no one to blame and nothing to forgive. I find that infinitely comforting.

I love their indifference.

August Afterglow

Lake Michigan after sunset

The past weekend brought many visitors to Northport, some familiar for years with Leelanau, others seeing it for the first time. My stepdaughters had booked four nights at the Jolli-Lodge, south of Leland on Lake Michigan, their favorite place for the past two years, owing to special 2022 memories, while grandson Jack and his college buddy, Daniel, tent-camped in the backyard of my old farmhouse. 

Jolli-Lodge

Backyard camp

Before any family showed up, however, my friend and book colleague Helen, from Arizona, appeared in Northport on Thursday evening, all the way from Arizona! We had dinner together at Faro and then a visit in the bookstore on Saturday, when I was able to introduce her to my stepdaughters. Our visits are never long enough, since that very first week we spent together in Carefree years ago, but Helen’s first visit to northern Michigan will not be her last, and we are already looking forward to the next. Book people never run out of conversation!

 

Booksellers Pamela and Helen

My Michigan-&-Minnesota contingent joined me for Indian food (from Rosie at NJ’s) on the porch on Saturday after my stepdaughters enjoyed their very first Northport dog parade and the boys showed up (too late for the parade) from Kalamazoo. And after dinner? Those college boys cleared the table and did the dishes and put away the leftovers, all on their own sweet initiative! What a treat that was! They can visit any old time they want, believe me! I must admit there was a lot of barking over the weekend, but no wonder! We were all in high spirits. 

Sunny loved the soccer ball.

I took Sunday off work – did not even go to Northport – and, other than giving Sunny a bath and doing a single load of laundry to hang out in the sunshine, did very little before our family dinner meet-up at Nitolo’s in Lake Leelanau. Resisted the compulsive urge to make another batch of two of jam and held myself down to a little desultory weeding and edging, cutting of flowers for the porch table, tossing a tennis ball and a Frisbee a few times before stretching out comfortably with a book on the end of the porch -- the book at last resting on my face, I took a short summer nap! (What a concept!) Meanwhile, the boys explored Sleeping Bear and Traverse City, and the women beach and vineyard, disappointed only that the Port Oneida Fair on Friday and Saturday did not continue through Sunday, as they'd hoped.

But Nitolo’s never disappoints, and neither did sunset afterward at the Jolli-Lodge with s’mores, beach fires, happy families, lapping waves, and Petoskey stones. 

BIG one!

Sweet, peaceful place! No doubt there would have been less sleeping that night if any of us had remembered the Perseid meteor showers and/or known in advance that there would be a show of northern lights! As it was, we missed both. Still, no complaints. 

Before Monday morning’s bookstore opening, there was an agility session for Sunny and me. I can’t be taking photos while we work, but when Sunny and Duffy had a little playtime after the work, I whipped out my phone. These shots aren't much, but we don't want to leave the dogs out of the post, do we? Especially since the past two years I have not photographed the dog parade but just let myself "be in the moment." 

The triple jump

Coach Mike's sheltie, Duffy

I have finished my reading of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Anne, a novel that took many twists and turns before the last page (I won't give away any of the plot of Anne, so that anyone who digs up a modern reprint won't be deprived of surprise), and have started A Lantern in Her Hand, by Nebraska's Beth Streeter Aldrich. (It was, in fact, the Aldrich book that led me gently into an afternoon nap on Sunday.) Published in 1928, A Lantern in Her Hand tells of the life of a pioneer girl grown to womanhood in the days of prairie homesteading, with descriptions of both the beauties and the hardships of frontier life in 19th-century Nebraska. Woolson and Aldrich both portray strong female characters making their way and finding happiness in American times past, despite challenges and social strictures. 

 

From the visit of my Arizona hiking buddy and her dog through visits from my son and his wife to the annual sisters get-together and now August bringing another friend and more family, summer has been a busy time, passing as always in a happy blur. All of my July FOLTL book-author events are behind me now, too, and the long sunset of summer has begun. 

Family time. Happy dogs. Good books. Fresh cherries and sweet corn and bright flowers and berries galore. Sun and wind and water. We are almost halfway through August. Now life might be slowing down a little bit. Do you think it's possible? Afterglow --

What a Weekend! (And what a transition, from dog parade to French literature!)

Summer is winding down....

This past Saturday was the Northport Dog Parade, the second-biggest day in the Northport summer – second only to crowds for the 4^th of July fireworks, that is, but as for daytime crowds probably the biggest day, and the 2023 theme, “Canine Couture,” certainly inspired colorful entries. I took a different approach to watching the parade this year. I didn’t take my camera outside, just stood on the sidelines enjoying the spectacle and applauding the entries as they passed by. Other people – plenty of other people! – would be taking plenty of photographs and videos, I knew, and so it was. The Traverse City Record-Eagle even sent a reporter and photographer to cover this year’s event. In this video you can see our former township librarian, Deb Stannard, parade marshall, in a car driven by Clifford the dog.

Sunny and friend -- reunited!

Sunny and I had other important fish to fry that same evening and all the next day and on into Monday morning, because Therese and Yogi, formerly our Arizona hiking buddies, came for a visit! Sunny and Yogi greeted each other with joyful abandon and familiarity, as if they had been parted only the day before. There was playtime in the yard, there were long walks, even trips to beaches – the whole nine yards. Yogi did the first dog paddling of her life! My visits to nearby Lake Michigan now number seven for the summer. It’s probably been years since I’ve been so diligent about getting to the beach. (Diligent? Yes, that’s what I mean. Double digits are now within reach!) But again, no photos from the beach. My friend took photos and videos, though, so here are the two of us: 

Another pair of hiking partners reunited!

Once dog parade is past, and we reach mid-August, though, once the first goldenrod blooms, cherry harvest is over, and apples are beginning to ripen, fall is in the air. Pow-wow is next weekend, and for me that marks the transition from summer to autumn. It's time to get the rest of my berry jam made as soon as possible to clear the decks for making applesauce and drying apples. 

 

As time permits (i.e., at night before I fall asleep or when I wake in the middle of the night), I’m nearing the end of Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian and plan to read it again soon in English translation, amazed at myself for being so enthralled with historical fiction, especially set in the time of the Roman Empire. But there was a reason Yourcenar was admitted into the French Academy (first woman member): her telling of Hadrian’s life in a voice she invented as his is mesmerizing and convincing.

“The true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself; my first homelands have been books, and to a lesser degree schools.”  

― Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

 

What are you reading as summer of 2023 winds to an end?