Finding More Color in Winter

There is a little color in this cool-toned scene, but you have to look for it. Inside the bookstore, on the other hand, there is color everywhere, and today I want to feature a new book especially lively in that regard.

The Woodscrit Chronicles: A Story for Children from Six to Ninety-Six, written by grown-up child Thomas M. Shoaff of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and East Leland, illustrated by his son Matthew-John Shoaff, tells the story of summer people from the point of view of the wild animals who live around them. What do furry year-round residents make of those who come to play on the lakes when days are long and nights are warm? Author Shoaff imagines the “critters” spying (benevolently) on human activities and keeping written records “in giant tomes for future reference,” and thus a central character in this fanciful tale is an old box elder tree, named (according to the story) for the ancestral record boxes kept in its generous heart. One night, however, the revered tree is felled by a storm—and thereby hangs the tale!


David and I were fortunate enough to read this book in manuscript and to see first-hand Matthew’s vivid and magical paintings. There are photographs in the book, too—of the original tree that inspired the story, of the young humans spied upon by the “critters,” and of the little red house to which the old tree finally came home to rest. This is a story to warm hearts and delight eyes on cold winter days! The images I’ve included here give the merest taste of what you will find inside the covers.


Now for a little change of pace: It’s been a while since I’ve reported on what David’s reading. To say he’s reading Thoreau would not be news, because he’s never not reading Thoreau. “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes” is one of his favorite quotations. (Our lives are cluttered with books, not new clothes.) At home or on the road, Thoreau is always near at hand. This past week, however, an unusual book has been claiming my husband’s attention. The book is Sheep: Life on the South Dakota Range, by Archer B. Gilfillan. Gilfillan lived from 1886 to 1955, and Sheep was first published in 1929 by Little, Brown. Illustrations are by Kurt Wiese. There’s a lot about dogs, which we enjoy, of course (he’s been reading bits aloud to me from time to time), but it’s more the quality of the writing than the subject matter that has David enthralled. The author is a wonderful writer, with an unusual sense of humor and a gift for turning a colorful turn of phrase.

We are very lucky to spend our days surrounded by delights and treasures and to be able to welcome new and old friends in to share them with us.

Snow, Cold and Mystery--Up North!

All over Leelanau County, snow is being moved. People are moving it, using shovels and blowers, scoops and plows. And what is in the forecast for the days ahead? More snow!

Cooking and reading fill my days. Dinner last night was a hot skillet dish of sausage, onions and apples, simmered in balsamic vinegar and apple cider, with steamed green beans and roasted sweet potatoes on the side, the sweet potatoes tossed with pecans and bleu cheese. Hot food renews one’s courage at the end of a cold day.

Yesterday afternoon at the bookstore I started reading Keeping the House, by Ellen Baker, and am already halfway through it (p. 271), racing back and forth from the 1880’s to 1950, following various characters through marriage, family life, war and peace, and enjoying myself immensely. There’s one mystery connected with this book—at least, it’s a mystery to me at this point. The author was identified on more than one Internet site as a “part-time bookseller,” her employer Beecroft Books & Coffee in Superior, Wisconsin. But Google searching also turned up several news items about Beecroft closing in late 2007. So here are my questions: Is the bookstore defunct? If so, is Ms. Baker selling books elsewhere? Or has s successful writing career (this novel has been garnering raves across the country) changed her life completely? And what of the Beecroft people? What are they doing these days? Another Up North bookseller wants to know!

Challenges All Over the Place

A retired professor friend was recalling errors encountered in student papers. One of his favorites was an old agrarian phrase transmuted by a city student into “a hard road to hoe.” The word “row” probably didn’t mean anything to the student, let alone “hoe” (as a garden implement, that is).

It’s cheery to see Christmas lights at the bakery and all the cars lined up outside Jeanette Egeler’s new Northport Fitness Center. The old Fitness Center up the hill has also re-opened, more expensive than downtown ($70 vs. $40/month) but with swimming pool for exercise and therapy. Things are, you see, still happening in Northport, even as the snow deepens, and I do like to stay upbeat in these pages, but--there’s no denying that the whole world these days is facing a hard row to hoe.

So, yes, uncertainty infects more than the book world, but it’s news of the book world that I receive every morning in the e-mailed newsletter “Shelf Awareness,” each new issue bringing more stories of bookstore closings. Today three such reports came from the South: 1) A Louisiana bookseller closing up shop had been in business 16 years. (Dog Ears Books will be 16 in July 2009.) 2) Another store owner in Alabama, throwing in the towel, had been disappointed when a hotel and casino planned for downtown did not come about to revitalize business. (Northport’s downtown is on a modest upswing, but state and national trends are going against us.) 3) In Georgia, a 90-year-old book dealer, in business for 40 years, is selling his stock at “almost giveaway prices.” (Is this what it comes down to in the end?) Yes, new bookstores are opening, too. Hope springs eternal, because dreams never die. And in the middle, neither giving up or just starting out, are those of us whose dreams have been tempered by reality but who carry on nevertheless, too stubborn to give up our passion.

A couple of Vermont booksellers are going the extra mile to get out the “Shop Local Business” message:

"The message is simple: support your locally owned independent business," said [Chris] Morrow [of Northshire Bookstore]. "Where you spend your money has a tremendous impact on what happens in our community. Decisions are made locally by people who are on your volunteer boards, running your Little League--it's not corporate headquarters somewhere closing a store so x number of people lose their jobs and there's a big vacant building. Since the economic collapse, people are seeing how important it is to build local resilience."



"People are getting the message," added Steve Eddy, owner of Book King, Rutland, "but I'm so enthusiastic about it, I explain it to them whether they want to hear it or not."

As I prepare my ad for the 2009 Northport High School yearbook, I muse on the roots my little business has put down in this community.

Here’s the scoop on Dog Ears Books this winter: The bookstore will be open through the December holidays, Tuesdays through Saturdays, with almost every book in stock reduced 20%. That includes (with only three exceptions) shiny, beautiful new books on the shelves and tables! I wanted to make holiday shopping on Waukazoo Street attractive this year (books are more frugal and easier to wrap than a ski vacation for the family in Vail), but the sale will also extend clear to the end of the year for those with Christmas and Hanukkah gelt to burn.

Then, after the new year, Dog Ears will be on “vacation” for three months--not because your local bookseller has gotten so rich in Northport that she’s taking off on a Caribbean cruise but because the cost of winter utilities has not been covered by sales for the last two years, and I can’t afford to squander my hard-earned summer profits. I’ll write blog postings as often as possible (perhaps “Books in Northport on the Road”); the main assignment I’m giving myself for the weeks away, however, is to finish a first draft of a YA (young adult) novel, begun longer ago than I even want to admit.

In April, the doors will re-open, and we’ll have a big, fun book launch party for Ed and Connie Arnfield’s lovely new Roadside Guide to Michigan Plants, Trees, and Flowers: An Ecological Approach, published by Arbutus Press, a wonderful kick-off to the 2009 season. Could there be a better way to start the new bookstore year? I don’t think so!

Lazy Morning Thoughts

These wild turkeys have nothing to do with my morning thoughts, but I spied the flock wandering around Northport the day after Thanksgiving, too late to post them for the holiday, and they’ve been hanging out on my desktop ever since, waiting their turn on the blog.

Luxuriating beneath the covers for the second snowy morning in a row, my mind drifting from one thing to another until it reached Mackinac Island, I found myself asking, “How did I get here?” Then a reconstruction: I had begun by reminding myself of the new Bill Moyers book. This brought to mind a weekend philosophy conference (1994?) at the Aspen Institute, with Moyers scheduled as moderator. He could not attend, due to illness, a great disappointment to me, but the conference itself was a glimpse into another world for me. About a dozen graduate students, of whom I was one, had our expenses paid by the Institute. The only other female grad student was a young, beautiful, brilliant rabbi’s daughter. All the males were clean-scrubbed conservative Catholics, natural law adherents. “Law all the way down,” one of them affirmed. I couldn’t resist teasing him a little: “I thought it was turtles.” This memory brought in its train the wonderful turtle sculpture on Mackinac Island….

One of the young Catholic men, learning of my love for Bergson, loaned me Maritain’s book on Bergson. (It did not tempt me to transfer my allegiance.) This memory led me to reflect for the –nth time on Bergson’s treatment of Xeno’s paradoxes. Bergson’s basic insight was that the paradox is not in reality but in the intellect’s analysis of reality. (We know, after all, that the arrow does reach the target, whatever the paradox has to say about the impossibility of this result.) His second insight: intelligence leads us astray when we apply it outside its area of expertise, which is inherently practical. Thus the paradoxes and conundrums that result from metaphysical inquiry.

Oh, no, not more philosophy! Very well, then, how about chocolate? There is a wonderfully simple recipe on the Baker’s baking chocolate box for Chewy Chocolate Drops. I will not reproduce it here but will suggest an addition, one I have not yet tried: chopped dried cherries. Chewy Chocolate Cherry Drops! That may be the best idea I had in my morning musings.

P.S. forget the icing. The cookies don’t need it, cherries or no.

Home in the Snow

By late afternoon, after breakfast in bed, after hours of radio, after outdoor exercise and dog play, and after a convivial visit from the snowplow—well, not really a plow but a tractor with snow-blower, operated by friend Gerald Lee—that involved lots of Up North talk of drifting snow, steep driveways, generators, old-time wells, etc.—after all that, and with a hearty two-bean soup simmering on the stove, David and I sat down at last to our books. Before I lose myself again in the story of Renée, Paloma and the new tenant, I want to quote here a long passage from earlier in the novel, as homage to the Leelanau Children’s Choir and Youth Ensemble, whose annual concert I missed this year when migraine dragged me down.

This is Paloma, lonely, brilliant 12-year-old, writing in her “Journal of the Movement of the World” about a choir concert at her own public school in Paris. Note that our young narrator has a low opinion of her fellow students and of the value of life in general. Even so, she cannot resist:

Every time, it’s a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and age, and there’s this life we’re struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck—it all disappears, just like that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love, and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers’ faces are transformed: it’s no longer Achille Grand-Fernet that I’m looking at (he is a very fine tenor) or Déborah Lameur or Ségolène Rachet or Charles Saint-Sauveur. I see human beings, surrendering to music.

Every time, it’s the same thing, I feel like crying, my throat goes all tight and I do the best I can to control myself but sometimes it gets close: I can hardly keep myself from sobbing. So when they sing a canon I look down at the ground because it’s just too much emotion at once: it’s too beautiful, and everyone singing together, this marvelous sharing, I’m no longer myself, I am just one part of the sublime whole, to which the others also belong, and I always wonder at such moments why this cannot be the rule of everyday life, instead of being an exceptional moment, during a choir.

When the music stops, everyone applauds, their faces lit up, the choir radiant, it is so beautiful.

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.

- Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions, 2006)

It is impossible not to feel for Paloma in her existential angst, just as it is impossible not to feel the intellectual loneliness of Renée, the concierge. At the point I have now reached I the book, these two characters and Monsieur Ozu, three people fated to be true friends, are finally coming together. Will they be sufficiently happy in the sympathetic communion we know they will find together to turn a kinder eye on the world of lesser mortals? That would be a true forward movement of the world.

With Bells On

This is how Sarah greeted friends and customers today at the bookstore.

Wordless Observation

Color Here, Color There

Despite leaden skies, despite hills and trees blanketed in white, there were flashes of color to be found today in Northport. These mountain ash berries behind Barb's Bakery were cheery. A red bicycle abandoned (temporarily, I'm sure) behind the library also caught my eye.



But I must confess--I'm escaping again to Paris tonight. It came, it came! The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, has been a sensation in Europe and is now available in the U.S. (and at Dog Ears Books) in trade paperback. One Parisian psychotherapist has been prescribing it for her patients. I won't even begin to quote the rave reviews. There are two narrators, a suicidal 12-year-old genius and the concierge of the apartment building, a secret autodidact. My stepdaughter, who recommended this book to me, loved it despite the philosophy. So there's that caveat. But for me, it is all self-indulgence. Really, here I am on the rue de Grenelle, after having spent two or three evenings on the rue du Bac (Left Bank, by Kate Muir). Okay, I promise the next book I read will be by an American writer and feature an American setting!

REMINDER: Leelanau Children's Choir and Youth Ensemble will be performing this coming Friday and Saturday in Northport. Don't miss this beautiful seasonal concert. Tickets available at Dog Ears Books or at the door, performances 7:30 p.m. both evenings.

ANOTHER REMINDER: Saturday, 6 p.m., is the Christmas tree lighting in the village of Northport, followed by merchant open house events downtown. Dog Ears Books will have its house open until 8 p.m. Please come and celebrate with us.

DECEMBER BOOK SALE: Dec. 3-31 at Dog Ears Books in Northport most books in stock, new and used, will be discounted 20% to help with your holiday shopping! The sale is not limited to the open house hours but starts tomorrow and continues to the end of the month. No holds, please. Come and shop and carry away your treasures!

Snow Day

School was closed. This isn't the very first snow this season but it's certainly the first day of real snow—that is, deep snow, blowing snow, power outages—and the bridge over the creek next to the bakery had a real holiday look this morning. Curl up and read, friends! I’m in town waiting for Dan, the UPS man, to bring me The Elegance of the Hedgehog, strongly recommended by a family member, and Mouth Wide Open, another fun foodie book out in paperback in time for the holidays. Animals Make Us Human, the new book by Temple Grandin, is going on my next order, along with anything else my customers request.

One recent request (coming today or tomorrow) was How Football Explains America. (I’d be on somewhat firmer ground if the explanation were baseball.) Someone else ordered How We Live and How We Die, two books by the same author; another asked for A Whole New Mind; still another wants (to know) How to Write Like Chekhov. I’d settle for my old (used) mind, if only I could learn to write like Chekhov. It’s always interesting, though, to see what titles come together on an order list, kind of like looking at a virtual communal bookshelf where neighbors have each contributed a book or two.

Back to Paris Again

On a monochromatic day like today, borrowing color from the past seems only sensible. I've been borrowing literary color, too, crossing the Atlantic for it.

Sometimes after I finish two or three books I’d been living inside, so to speak, for a while, it’s hard to settle on the next. That’s where I was the night before Thanksgiving. Tried a murder mystery by a popular writer whose work I’ve enjoyed before but found he just didn’t fit my mood this time. Took up a novel by a favorite poet-essayist and gave it a few chapters before folding that hand, wondering why she had been so unwilling to let the characters speak for themselves. I did want another novel, though, and at last committed to Left Bank, by Kate Muir. Only after I had described this novel in e-mail to family members as “fun” did I realize the strangeness of such a description in talking about a story that has a young child suddenly disappearing, possibly kidnapped, in the first chapter--hardly the stuff of comedy! But as the author shifts into chapters of flashbacks, mercilessly skewering Parisian obsessions with film, fashion, food and philosophy (also satisfying my memory-laden fantasies with scene after scene in the Sixth Arrondissement), I find it hard to believe anything terrible has happened or will happen to bright, independent little tomboy, Sabine. We’ll see. I decided to save for reading aloud to David tonight the chapter which has Sabine’s mother, the Texas-born French movie star, filming on location in Picardy. He’ll love that.