This Blog Is a Lie

Not entirely, because I do love my life, and I am grateful for it and take joy in it. All that is true. So my blog isn’t a complete lie, but neither is it the “whole” truth, because the pain is as real as the pleasure.

Between me and the road to the woods, a new row of cherry trees

Orchard advances on our old farmhouse, on leased land around us, like an encircling army, coming closer every year. NO ENTRE signs warn of pesticides, and our freedom of movement on all sides is more and more limited – with each passing week, it seems. Our neighbors’ dogs and our Sarah can no longer be allowed to run on the hill between their house and ours, as rows of trees now march up and down that hillside. Of course, the dogs don’t understand. 

When our grandson and his friends visit, they like to explore a certain path to Lake Michigan that has been part of grandson David’s world up here for all his life, as it used to be part of our own before so many big, new houses were built along that stretch of shoreline. The last time the kids were up, I heard from a friend who lives in one of the big houses that “young people – strangers” had been seen on the beach! On private property! This same friend was upset a few years back when a new house was planned on property adjoining that which she and her husband own. “It will be lost to us!” she cried. I told her it had been lost to the rest of us a long time ago. Our grandson, a young man of boundless goodwill and no troublemaker, has not yet accepted the loss.

My husband used to have a house down in the woods in what is now part of Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. We love the Lakeshore and are happy it is public land rather than condos, though it still feels like home to us, very personal. But all visitors are equal under the law, and our dog cannot run off-leash in the old meadow, even under our supervision. I feel as much on the leash as my dog and chafe at the restriction. It’s “the Meadow,” our special place! No one cares.

A few years ago I discovered a lovely wooded ridge with a new road down below and a foot trail along the ridgetop. There were wildflowers in the spring and berries in late summer and early fall. Only once did Sarah and I meet anyone else there, and it was another woman with her dog, and we enjoyed the company. I knew all along, though, that it was only a matter of time before houses would be built there, as the land had already been divided into lots, the road brought in, utilities provided. Last year the first house appeared, halfway down road. No more ridge path exploring.

Another semi-wild spot closer to Northport, old orchard land, was handy for short, quick off-leash expeditions. A golf course is going in there now. Orderly recreation. Lots of people will enjoy it.

More and more I understand the father of the protagonist in Conrad Richter’s The Awakening Land trilogy, who dragged his family from the Pennsylvania woods to the Ohio Territory because Pennsylvania had become too “crowded.” We are fortunate in Leelanau County to have lovely nature trails. I know this. I appreciate the trails. But following a trail, staying on a path, with other walkers and hikers ahead and behind, is not the same as being alone in the woods, and it isn’t anything at all like exploring.

Then there is another, more universal aspect to loss, which is that each passing year brings advancing age and, with it, hovering clouds of future physical limitation. Two or three years ago, for the first time, when I was out hiking wooded hills with my dog, the footing somewhat treacherous, the thought occurred to me: I won’t always be able to do this. Once it occurred, that thought never left. The good part of that is being constantly aware of precious moments and hours while I’m living them; the sad part is picturing their eventual end. 

A chaque âge ses plaisirs, my old friend Hélène used to say. I hope it’s true, but right now I’m not at all interested in finding substitute pleasures. I’m not ready to give up the hikes alone with my dog or the exploring of wild nature or my gardens or my dream of chickens or any other part of my off-road, back-of-beyond country life. And so, sometimes, in the middle of the night or even in the bright light of afternoon, my heart is pierced with sadness. 

No one needs to tell me how lucky I have been for so long. I've been spoiled -- not by wealth (never had it; never will have it) but by freedom of movement. I know that. I'm grateful. Don't often complain. Still....

News Without Words

Spiritual Attachment Amid Spring Distraction

O, Glorious Morning in May!

Is single vision possible in the spring? Narrow focus? Can anyone achieve or even attempt it? Look here! Oh, look over there! The door opens . . . the sun floods in . . . outdoors beckons. . . .

Bruce worked yesterday at the bookstore, and David was on hand, also, working in his gallery (photos soon, i.e., as soon as he feels everything is ready), making freedom’s clarion call almost irresistible, and the only reason I settled down to paint the new railing by the entrance was that we were expecting a friend’s visit, and the hope of seeing her kept me at my task until it was done.

Helping the paint dry....

Can you read the shadows on the wall?

Picnic ground on the bluffs

Didn’t Sarah deserve a reward then for her patience? I thought so, and we made a little expedition to Peterson Park, where by chance we met a Boston terrier from Chicago. (That was fun for all concerned!)

Lake Michigan

Next stop was to see our friends (and their pigs) at Bare Knuckle Farm. (Hi, Abra!) Then a visit to Northport Nursery for beautiful blue lobelia. I don’t worry about finding geraniums before Memorial Day, but lobelia can be elusive, and an opportunity cannot be allowed to slip past.

(A plethora of parentheses, you see. They indicate a distracted mind, don’t you think?)

Time, work, and nature will make this a garden

Home at last to water my straw bales and to breathe in their sweet scent, anticipating the tomato plants I’ll be getting from the Bare Knuckle folks and remembering the giant collard plant – one plant – that gave and gave and gave two years ago when I had my first straw bale garden. (Must have collards!)

We met friends for dinner at the Bluebird in Leland, and that brought back a flood of memories, as did seeing many other friends there for dinner, companions from earlier Leland days, older now, as are we. After dinner, we took the traditional stroll down to the harbor for sunset. 

The river flows out into the Big Lake

Stephanie said, "Every sunset is beautiful."

Memories, going back in time, anchoring one in place. David will always be a “Leland person,” his memories there going back to 1957, but it’s different for me, because in Leland (coming from Kalamazoo) I was only, first, his girlfriend, later, his wife. When a Northport friend whose Leelanau family goes back four generations told me years ago that I was a “Northport person,” I felt proud. I’m happy in Northport, where my bookstore was born 20 years ago, right on Waukazoo Street. But I’ve never lived in the village.

So my “spiritual home,” as David puts it, is not in any city or town. Not in Northport, Michigan, or Paris, France, not in Chicago or Cincinnati or Kalamazoo or Delton. It’s here on our few acres surrounded by orchards and woods. Back when we still lived in Leland, David had his studio here in the farmhouse, and I had my first garden, and the only water we had for drinking was what we hauled in. A rain barrel and many trips down the hill to the creek and back up with full buckets kept my garden alive. Our old dog loved to lie under the basswood tree in the backyard and watch me work in the garden. Now Sarah loves the same spot.

Pots to fill

Under the basswood tree. The messy but venerable old silver maples, one in front, another in back of the house. Back roads and places without paths. My old farmhouse, my country neighborhood. St. Wenceslaus Parish, Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern. My front porch and my backyard. My clotheslines. My meadow.

This is the place I love, my home ground, my spiritual home, my anchorage. Here the distractions fall away. Its center holds me.

It is a whole world...

,,,in every season

An Urgent Plea for Bees

You say you’re not a farmer? Well, do you have a lawn? We need to stop killing bees! PLEASE READ ON!

The April 2013 issue of Acres USA magazine (Vol. 43, no. 4), “the Voice of Eco-Agriculture” in this country, has an article by Donald Sutherland entitled “The Silent Spring.” The title should sound familiar: Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, was an indictment of the American attempt to dominate nature with chemistry, poisoning the environment with DDT. It was a wake-up call. Have we gone back to sleep? Looks like it.

Sutherland’s article in Acres focuses on widely used pesticides called neonicotinoids that get their name from their relation to nicotine. They are “in a class of insecticides that attack the central nervous system of insects,” and they are “toxic through the entire growing season.” Corn, soybeans, other vegetables, soil, seeds, timber, animal pests, fruit and nut crops –scarcely anything grown by American farmers is not treated with neonicotinoid, although all fruits, vegetables and trees depend on bees to pollinate their blossoms to produce seeds, vegetables and fruits!

Well, it must be safe, right? If the EPA and USDA allow its use? Think again.

A Purdue University study published in January 2012 concludes that the use of this class of insecticides is killing pollinating bees and can hang around in the soil for years. A study from Harvard School of Public Health links the pesticides with colony collapse disorder (CCD). France, Italy, and Germany have banned their use since 2008, and now the entire European Union is on board with the ban. The company producing the insecticide is a German company, and yet Germany banned the product, which is now banned throughout Europe. Not the U.S., though. While Europe was deciding to institute a continent-wide ban, our own EPA chooses to grant approval of the bee-killing poison.

If you’ve read this far, whether or not you have followed the links – which I urge you to go back and do if you haven’t – you should be getting an inkling of how how bad the situation is, but it’s worse than that, because who more than Americans has such a fetish for perfect lawns? Yes, lawn and garden products also contain neonicotinoids, so if you’re spraying your lawn or hiring a lawn care company that is spraying your lawn, please take time today to look into what you’re doing or having done in your name. Writes Sutherland:

Read the ingredients and look for any of these substances: clothianidin, acetamiprid, dinotefuran, nitenpyram, thiacloprid and thiamethoxam.

Please boycott products containing these toxins and tell everyone you know to do the same. You will be doing what you can at home to safeguard your country’s food supply, and isn’t that more important than a synthetic-looking green carpet around your house? Beyond the boycott, we need to harass our so-called representatives in Congress about this danger.

Water, soil, bees – we're dependent on them for survival. Why is a government agency set up to protect citizens not doing its job? Another five-year study required? Will there be any bees left by then? 

If the Bill of Rights contains no guarantee that a citizen shall be secure against lethal poisons distributed either by private individuals or by public officials, it is surely only because our forefathers, despite their considerable wisdom and foresight, could conceive of no such problem. - Rachel Carson

The Comfort of an Old, Familiar Book

What a host of little incidents, all deep-buried in the past – problems that had once been urgent, arguments that had once been keen, anecdotes that were funny only because one remembered the fun. Did any emotion really matter when the last trace of it had vanished from human memory; and if that were so, what a crowd of emotions clung to him as to their last home before annihilation! He must be kind to them, must treasure them in his mind before their long sleep. - James Hilton, Good-bye, Mr. Chips (1934)

It was another sunny morning on Thursday, with orchards breaking out into first bloom, yellow violets smiling in happy little knots at the edge of the woods, trees dripping with leaves and first flowers and catkins, but temperature dropped in the afternoon, and so, with lawn all mowed and straw bales in place for this year’s garden, and after two days filled with outdoor exertion, I was ready for a slow, quiet, indoor evening and the comfort of a small, old volume.

Old Mr. Chipping! There he was on the shelf, that old retired schoolmaster living in a boarding house across the way from the school where he had taught for so many years, still serving afternoon tea to boys new and old (dismissing them when his energy flagged), remembering the years before and during World War I, marveling at the changes brought by the postwar period, and imagining the memoir he knows he will never write. The fictional Mr. Chips, as they all called him, lived his life for the most part within a small geographical plot, but the area covered contained as much of England as of himself. Maybe this is part of why the book was so popular. The passage above on memory, though, is very personal – universal but necessarily personal, for all that – that sense that every memory, even the least scrap not shared with another living person, is priceless for living on in one’s own mind.

Good-bye, Mr. Chips was a runaway bestseller in 1934. My copy shows that the book was first published in June of that year and reprinted twice the same month, then reprinted twice in July, again in August, twice in September, and then again in October. That’s as far as the printing history opposite the half-title page goes, from which I conclude that my copy is from that October printing. A slight novel, only 125 pages, the main character’s entire life was centered on his students at a second-tier English boys’ school (not the best, but decent) before, during, and following a brief, happy marriage to a beloved bride who died in childbirth, leaving him alone again. It’s a simple story of a simple man who over time made himself irreplaceable in his small world. Reprints continued through 1935, 1936, 1938 and ’39, and there were further printings by Little, Brown (the original American publisher) in1948 and 1959, along with paperback and school editions. It was probably the 1959 issue that my parents had in the house when I was young, and I probably read it then on the front porch on a summer afternoon, lying on my stomach on the day bed, bare feet waving in the air.

A stage play was produced in 1938, and the first film version appeared in 1939, starring Robert Donat in the role that won him that year’s Academy Award for Best Actor, over the heads of Laurence Olivier in “Wuthering Heights,” Clark Gable in “Gone with the Wind and Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.” The film was remade in 1969 with Peter O’Toole, in 1974 as a television mini-series with Roy Marsdon, and most recently in 2002 with Martin Clunes in a Masterpiece Theatre production. The older he grew, it seems, the more beloved he was.

He had to take care of himself when there were east winds, but autumn and winter were not really so bad; there were warm fires, and books, and you could look forward to summer.

On a cool, overcast spring evening, looking forward to summer myself but not in any hurry for it, I enjoyed having imaginary tea again with Mr. Chips. He is still good company, as he has been to thousands of other readers and viewers over the decades. An old friend.

Friday morning, May 10: Wake to patter of rain. Have proof-reading to do, and I'll be in and out of the bookstore, where Bruce will be working today in my stead. That works. The occasional indoor day is not so bad.

May in Michigan, Michigan in May: Pure Heaven

Woods edge

After a long Michigan winter, nothing calls forth the joy of living like the month of May. In May small buds open to the sun, catkins unfurl, there is a green haze in the forest canopy but leaves are not yet large and thick enough to keep light from the forest floor, where wildflowers are abundant and riotously beautiful. Everyone searches for the first green, that of wild leeks, and then we strain our ears for spring peepers, and then we watch impatiently for the first trillium blooms, but trillium is not the first flower, nor is it the only one deserving of attention, so let's look closer and see what else there is to see. What catches your eye first? The trillium or the trout lily?

Flowery floor

Do you notice all the modest little spring beauties surrounding the showier flowers?

And what about those deeply toothed green leaves? Is there a flower to which these belong? Yes, it is the quiet, easily overlooked cutleaf toothwort, Dentaria laciniata, a member of the mustard family with a nice, sharp, spicy tang to perk up a spring salad. 

Toothwort -- yum!

None of this will last long, and there is raking and mowing and digging and manuring and planting to do, too, besides all the preparation for another bookstore season, not to mention reading and writing and visiting with friends, so it's a good thing the days begin early in May and last well into the evening. 

June is lovely, Will Shakespeare, I grant you that. But for utter Michigan perfection, give me May any time -- although it is probably all the sweeter and more precious for coming only once a year. 

Earlier Experiences of Defeat – and One Memorable Victory

Many people expressed fear at the very idea of a spelling bee the first year I tried to get a team together, and many since have shivered at our team's experiences. There are a lot of memories involved in these fears, so I went back to visit some of my own this morning, memories not having to do with spelling victories.

I was my grade school spelling champion in third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, but that doesn’t mean I escaped the experiences of losing and even of outright humiliation. A fast runner and excellent tree climber, good with addition and multiplication tables, in upper elementary school I started falling behind in math and sports. Story problems made my blood run cold: they were not the kind of stories I checked out of the school library, that’s for sure! Long division required estimating, but who wants to guess? Give me a surefire algorithm, or forget it!

Then there were gym classes and playground sports. Who but the shy, nearsighted, undersized child can understand the fear of a ball coming right at you? In volleyball games, I ducked rather than jumping toward the ball. At home plate, bat on shoulder, I was cringing before the pitcher even threw the ball. In my elementary school days, boys and girls played together on softball teams. Two people would be chosen by the teacher (these eager beavers volunteered to be chosen, of course) to select the rest of the members for their teams. Back and forth, they took turns choosing. Who was always left until last, so that the team whose turn it was to choose last simply got stuck with me? When our team was in the field, I was in the outfield, looking for four-leafed clovers, picking dandelions, and praying the ball would never reach me. Usually it didn’t. (That’s why I had been sent out there.) Sooner or later, though, when our team was up to bat, the turn came around to me, and that was the worst, as the other team would call out jeeringly, “Easy out! Easy out!” They were absolutely right.

Then came junior high and even more nightmarish mathematics, but this was complicated by scheduling. I was in an accelerated homeroom in seventh grade but also in orchestra, with only one other girl from my homeroom, so while the rest of our class was having accelerated math, we were in orchestra, and later in the afternoon we had math with a regular, non-accelerated class. (Fine with me!) Ah, but then the powers that were decided it was unfair for two young violinists to be deprived of accelerated math, and they re-rigged our schedules so we could have math with the rest of our homeroom. For me, this was disaster. The rest of the class had covered two years in one in seventh grade. We violinists, on the other hand, were skipping from seventh to ninth grade. I wouldn’t have minded skipping a year of English, but a year of math? Going straight to algebra? NIGHTMARE!!!

Rather than end this sorry tale in the quagmire of later high school mathematics and my sorry SAT score on the math section, I’ll tell you of one triumph, because it meant so much to me that I’ve never forgotten it.

Freshman year of high school. A combined township high school and junior college population of five thousand students. Freshmen on half-days because of overcrowding. Country mouse dropped into noisy, exciting pushing and shoving of urban life. Classes with complete strangers. And, because of that eighth grade (nightmare) experience with algebra, dropped into a geometry class with sophomores, juniors, and seniors. The only freshman in the class.

But geometry was better than algebra. It was visual. You could look at the problems.

So one day the teacher posed this question to the class: A bicycle tire has some object – I forget, but say it was a piece of chewing gum picked up from the pavement – stuck to it. As the rider proceeds down the street, what figure in space describes the path of the piece of chewing gum? The hands of confident students shot up into the air, and one by one they gave their solutions, but all were wrong.

I thought and thought and could see it in my mind, but was it even possible that I could be right? At last, with everyone else wrong, I raised my hand and gave my answer. The teacher asked me to come up and draw my answer on the blackboard. It was right.

The rest of the class could not keep quiet. “The freshman got it!” one jock exclaimed in disbelief. “The freshman got it!”

A little embarrassing but mostly music to my ears! So much better than “Easy out!”

In Which We Learn the Agony of Defeat

"We'll wake up again."

Cold weather returned, and the pretty little spring beauties and shy trout lilies closed up their petals and went back to sleep. My dreams Friday night kept me busy setting up a straw bale garden and even refinishing old farmhouse floors, and in the morning out came the winter jacket again to keep me warm in the woods with Sarah. 

Friday was the annual spelling competition on Friday afternoon at Gilbert Lodge on (one of the) Twin Lakes west of Traverse City, and once again Marilyn Zimmerman, Trudy Carpenter and I were the the bookstore team. Is it our sixth year? Marilyn and I were by ourselves the first time, and Trudy has been with us ever since.

Well, the Dog Ears Books team did not cover itself with glory this year at the Senior Spelling Bee. Perhaps, as one member remarked, we had become overconfident and needed a little reminder from Fate. Be that as it may, we went down in Round 7 when the three of us agreed to spell ‘vendible’ (the correct spelling) with an ‘a’ in the middle syllable. WRONG! Rather than stretch out the suspense, in case you’re wondering about a rule for –able and –ible words, here and here are links to the answer. We’ll know better next year. Of course, there are many exceptions to the so-called rules....

But oh, the words that appeared when the Bee Master went to his second box! Words no one present had ever encountered in a lifetime, and recall that contestants must be 55 years of age (or is it 50?) to participate! When one team went down on ‘exsert’ (it’s the opposite of ‘insert’), there were only two teams left of the seven who had begun, and when the Bee gets down to the last two teams the rules change. 

Bee Master Michael Sheehan and last two teams

If one team then misses a word, the other team must spell that word correctly and spell a second word correctly to validate their win. If the second team misses either word, it’s on to a new round. This Bee went 35 rounds, due to words such as these: farraginous, aichmophobia, rhonchial, zymurgy, ochlesis, obvallate, oneirodynia, sagittiform, roscid, agrestic, blennoid, and sybotic. How many of those do you think my spell-checking program accepts? It’s entirely possible I’ve made a mistake or two here, but I don’t think all but two are incorrect, as the program is telling me.

Bee Master consults with judges when a challenge is issued

In the end, the father-daughter team took first place this year, and they deserved to win. Second- and third-place teams also put up good, long fights. Maybe next year my friends and I will be back in the top three (where we've always been up to now), but we had a good time despite our loss, and as one team-member whose grandchildren come to watch her spell remarked in e-mail to me this morning, “I had the chance to show my grandchildren that grownups sometimes lose, and they can still go out for ice cream.”  An important lesson, I think we can all agree.

There was irony for me in the word that toppled us, as I have been reading William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, and had noticed his spelling of ‘vendible’ but had thought it must have changed since then. It hasn’t. But did you follow the links above? If you did (and even if you didn't), of the following, which spelling would you choose as correct –

COLLECTABLE

           or

COLLECTIBLE

-- and why?

Come to think of it, I probably got a much better night’s sleep refinishing floors in my dreams than going through another spelling bee. But if you take any little bit of wisdom away from today's blog post, let it be this:

“Grownups sometimes lose, and they can still go out for ice cream.” - Trudy Carpenter

Saturday morning fiddleheads

Red Mullein Now on Waukazoo Street

Locals and visitors who have been familiar with Clare Gengarelly's Red Mullein Arts and Crafts Gallery, housed down at the old Depot until very recently, will recognize the signature red mullein painting in the photo at left. Since buying the old garage building at 106 Waukazoo (home to Dog Ears Books for the past six years), Clare has been busy with remodeling and redecorating and now, at last, beginning to display her wares. The new gallery space will be open "soon," she promises, and eventually, when the outdoor refurbishing is complete, we will have a big open house and invite the whole community. For now, here's a little sneak preview of some of the colorful delights Clare will be offering.

Art hangable and wearable 

I haven't photographed the large gallery space yet, only the small area in front, so this is truly only a first peek. "I like bright colors," Clare remarked the other day, but anyone can see that at a glance.

My new neighbor and I are pleased with the changes we've made on Waukazoo Street. We like being next-door neighbors, too.

Self-portrait with cat

Guest Book Review: BUNKER HILL

Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

By Nathaniel Philbrick

Viking, May 2013

$32.95

This is an astonishingly fresh and well-written example of popular history at its best. I highly recommend this splendid book to anyone who has the slightest interest in the genuine revolution that made this country. The book is gripping in its narration of the beginning conflict in a war whose importance nearly everyone “knows,” though aside from George Washington -- who did not enter the picture till Bunker HiIl was over -- few of the major players are known outside specialized classes taught in college. Along with eloquent mini-bios of several movers and shakers, including Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and the traitor Benjamin Church, Philbrick introduces us to the heroic Dr. Joseph Warren, who directs much of the preparation among the patriot “Minute Men,” leading to the staggering outcome that still surprises, though it happened in June of 1775.

As for the “battles” of Lexington and Concord, and the real and terrible battle of Bunker Hill (Breeds Hill), this book is vivid testimony to the author's understanding of the profound influence of the past upon the present.

True, one begins such a book thinking skeptically, “Oh-oh, another book on the legendary battle above Boston,” but as the tale unfolds, the author's ability to engage the reader's interest moves this page-turner from incident to incident, and via his well known mastery of detail (evidenced in Sea of Glory), he actually manages to provide

a telling lesson from history, via his bloody and unflinching chronicle of the battle itself. At the same time, he never loses sight of the human element.

It is impossible here to summarize Philbrick's impressive grasp of the importance of the events he covers, but as he tells the story through decisions made (or not made) by the characters themselves, the core of that “victory” in the Revolutionary War is revealed, as from behind a curtain of myths and fantasy. We see how the physical necessity and violence of war brought out the bravery and self-sacrifice of the patriots who fought there and, in the process, started a national life, forged in the crucible of battle. Bunker Hill names an epic event that made a rebellion into something much greater. Nor are the British dismissed as badly led fools marching into hell: They come across as equally brave, if not equally inspired. 

I warrant that Bunker Hill will land on the short list of books that historians love as much as the general public, since the author spares nothing in his biographical précis of the major actors in the drama. And drama it is. In the end one puts the book down reluctantly, with new understanding of why the “provincials” met the challenge -- and won through in the end, eight years later.

reviewed by Kenneth C. Wylie

Northport, Mi

April 30, 2013

Nathaniel Philbrick’s IN THE HEART OF THE SEA won the National Book Award in 2000, and his MAYFLOWER was a Pulitzer finalist. Among other titles, he is known to some readers of Books in Northport as the author of WHY READ MOBY-DICK?

Kenneth C. Wylie, a freelance writer, received his Ph.D. in African History in 1967 at Michigan State University and his B.A. from Albion College in 1960. He has taught at Wayne State University, Lehman College of CUNY, the Maritime College of SUNY, and Michigan State University. He has published books on Africa, as well as pieces on wildlife and the environment, ranging from the Common Crow to the vanishing legend of Bigfoot. He is also the author of a short collection of poems centered on the magnificent landscape around his rural home near Traverse City.