Tinges of Autumn

And aren’t they grand! Who knew (or remembered) that cool morning air could feel so good.

Our weekend commenced with a Friday morning trip to the downtown farmers’ market. Such color! Such hubbub! We contented ourselves with a few spectacular tomatoes, two long and massive leeks, a huge clump of kale, and a cardboard tray of oversized zucchini and summer squash.

One teenaged kid was unloading ears of corn from the back of a pickup truck by the armload onto his table.

“Think you’re going to sell all that?” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied blasély, and went back to work.

I asked the guy with the zucchini if he’d do a three-for-ten deal. “No. I work too hard,” he replied.

We had a few friends over for a late afternoon meal on the deck consisting of kale salad and a simplified version of cassoulet in which the duck and sausage are replaced by a few slices of bacon to go along with the chicken, cannellini beans, squash, and leeks.

Almost by chance, we kept to the southern French theme with the wines: a Saint-Véran, a Vacqueyras, and an obscure white from the Costiéres-de-Nîme.  

The air was cool, the dappled evening light was beautiful coming in through the trees, and the chipmunks were plunking. One red-eyed vireo passed by and lingered to examine the white berries on the dogwood shrubs along the deck. For a moment we thought it might be a warbler heading south!

The next morning, hardly fazed by the food and wine, we loaded our bikes on the car and drove up to Elm Creek Regional Park, which has the finest bike trails in the metro area—at least for the kind of recreational biking we do. 

It’s a nice mix of hills and flats, woods and fields, marshes and lakes, with relatively few cyclists and nary a dwelling in sight along its 20-mile length.

Another thing I like about it: there are so many twists and turns and so few recognizable landmarks that you seldom know quite where you are or how far you still have to go.

Catbirds meowed and squawked from the woods, peewees pined, goldfinches chuckled. We passed fields of goldenrod and black-eyed Susans. The sumac is not quite turning red, but a few plums are ripening on the trees.

Back home, Hilary diced a few of our market tomatoes and raided the garden for a handful of basil to put together a topping for bruschetta. She added some drizzled olive oil, salt, a minced clove of garlic, or two; that’s all it takes.

The tomatoes were moist and red and absolutely flavorless. The vine-on tomatoes at Trader Joe’s are far better. But the ensemble tasted good heaped onto pieces of toast. The mild afternoon heat was already on the wane.

 And one of our resident owls started to hoot again. Everyone likes it cool.

   

Winona Beethoven Overnight

Winona has been holding a midsummer Beethoven Festival annually for almost two decades now, with world-class performers and a wide array of classical ensembles, styles, and programs. After reading about the event for years—often after the fact—we finally committed ourselves this year to an evening of Beethoven quartets performed by the Ariel String Quartet.

It wasn’t the most auspicious moment to embark on an overnight getaway to Winona. Temperatures were in the 90s and forest fires in the BWCA had sent the air quality index to dangerous heights. The smell of stale smoke was everywhere, and the Minneapolis skyline had been reduced to a vague dystopian silhouette.

We went anyway. We’d already booked the tickets and the motel. And there was reason for hope. The forecast mentioned the possibility of rain, which would wash some of the smoke away, and the NW wind might just shush the nasty stuff east into Wisconsin.

We left town at 1:30. There was water on the roads in Red Wing. The air had improved. Patches of blue sky appeared. Clouds took shape.

It rained heavily while we were checking into our motel on the outskirts of Winona. (Good timing.) We dressed for the concert (summer casual) and headed down into the city a few minutes later, looking for a place to grab a bite to eat. Hilary was scrolling the possibilities on Trip Advisor and happened on Sapori di Sicilia, which described itself as a “panificio : pasticceria.” A bakery and pastry shop?

It was only three blocks away. We parked right in front of the steps leading up to the place. Downtown Winona is full of half-decrepit storefronts, but this place seemed to be housed in a repurposed bank. Modern. Large tiles on the floor. Bakery cases half-full of tasty-looking morsels.

A closer look at the menu on the wall behind the cash register suggested that we’d come to the right place: truffle fries, falafel fritters, capicola panini. aglio e olio, gnocchi. And six or seven house wines at $ 6-8/glass.

Everything tastes better in an oversized bowl.

We ordered a Greek salad and pasta carbonara, took a table by the window, and settled in to watch the passing scene. The chairs were remarkably comfortable. Hilary had a great view of a group of seven elderly women engaged in animated conversation. A book club? University professors discussing some upcoming candidate for tenure? Or were they all headed to the Beethoven festival later that evening?

We nursed our orders, passing them back and forth across the table, happy to be inside watching the weather improve through the window. At one point I went up to the counter to get two glasses of water and said to the young woman behind the register, apropos of nothing, “This image on your menu looks like it came from Crete.”

“Well, it happens to be in the center of the Sicilian flag,” she replied, cracking a hint of a smile.

The concert took place at a theater on the campus of St. Mary’s University, tucked into the wooded bluffs a five-minute drive up the hill from our motel. The night wasn’t cool, but it was no longer unpleasantly hot, and the air had improved so greatly that Hilary spotted the crescent moon peeking through a rift in the clouds. People were milling around on the terrace in front of the concert hall, and it seemed the only thing missing was the sharp report of a passing nighthawk.

The concert itself was deeply expressive and thoroughly engaging: Beethoven—early, middle, and late. Works like these don’t carry you along like a breeze, they draw you in like a compelling argument, and the Ariel Quartet offered a flawless exercise in emotional logic and probing intensity. The first half of the program ran 90 minutes. The single piece after intermission was a mere twenty-two. The balance seemed perfect.

I was impressed. I had never heard of the Ariel Quartet prior to coming upon them in the festival schedule, though they’ve been playing together for almost thirty years. But I’m sure these musicians are less concerned with impressing people than with fully exposing the challenge, the anguish, and the beauty of Beethoven’s imagery.

The next morning, after a "light breakfast" at the motel, we returned to our new favorite Sicilian cafe stop to sample the bakery goods. The same young woman was behind the country, and when she brought us our coffee we learned a bit about the owner's background.

From there it was across the river to Trempealeau NWR, where we drove the nine-mile gravel circuit, stopping hear and there to take a walk or get a better view of a bird. The sky was clear and the humidity had dropped, though not by much. 

We spotted four or five indigo buntings along the way--they like to sit in the open at the tops of trees, displaying their iridescent feathers--but most of the birds were sheltering in the shadows of the vegetation. We heard warbling vireos, common yellow-throats, great-crested flycatchers, Eastern towhees, robins, pewees, yellow-bellied woodpeckers, catbirds--the usual suspects. Hilary spotted a few pelicans drifting out in the river. A beaver swam by. Perhaps our best sighting was of a red-headed woodpecker disappearing into the underbrush. 

   

The Heavenly Regions

Bright sun, a moderate breeze, and temperatures in the low sixties. These are the conditions that prevail in the heavenly regions, I suspect, and last weekend we were blessed with the same regime here in town. After rejecting three or four more exotic cycling options, Hilary and I decided to pump up the tires and make the time-honored, but often overlooked, trip around the Lakes.

What lakes? Bde Maka Ska, Harriet, and Isles, of course, a few minutes’ drive down the parkway from our house.

We got an early start. The air was sharp, and traffic on the bike paths was moderate. We were soaring.

It’s become fashionable to describe such episodes as “being in the present.” More than a few books have been written celebrating that level of innocent awareness, and offering advice about how to reach and sustain it.

I have no advice to give. I’m tempted to argue that such a concept is inappropriate to the occasion. At the least, it seems to suggest that our recollections of the past are filled with remorse, our anticipation of the future fraught with anxiety. That’s not necessarily true.

We used to live much closer to these lakes, and throughout our leisurely tour I was pleasantly reminded of people and events from the past. The recollections added an emotional depth to the visually spectacular scene. I was reminded of the years when our friends Greg and Betty lived in a condo across Bryant Park from us. As we locked our bikes and took a stroll through Harriet Gardens, I was reminded that the bedding plants near the fountains were once set off by a trim row of buckthorn hedges!

The tennis courts at Beard’s Pleasance reminded me of matches with an old friend interrupted again and again by snippets of conversation about food, films, and travel. We passed my cousin’s house, where we all used to sit on the shady porch as the morning heated up. And at one point, on the west side of Lake Harriet, I was reminded of a party I went to in the mid-1970s in an upstairs apartment before Hilary and I had even met.

On our way back to the car, we sat on a bench overlooking Bde MaKa Ska, trying to pick out a good place for lunch. Yum? No. Niviya Thai Kitchen? It’s gone downhill. Hazelwood? Too suburban. Convention Grill? Might work.

In the end, as we often do, we went home and cooked up something new, in this case a pasta salad with corn and cherry tomatoes from a recent recipe in the Times. Not bad. (But might not be a “keeper.”)

*   *   *

The next morning was equally brilliant but far more blustery. We drove down to the farmers’ market to pick up some parsley and a few discounted zinnias. Did some planting back home.

But the real highlight of the day came later, when we once again drove into town to attend a concert by Lux String Quartet being given at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in association with a traveling exhibit called Violins of Hope. The display consisted of six or seven Plexiglas cases holding a selection of violins that had been owned by Jews who died in concentration camps during WW II.  

This is serious stuff, and it might almost have seemed a bit morbid, except for the subtlety and zeal with which the members of Lux worked through their program, and also the verve with which each of the four performers announced a piece and also described what it was like to play an instrument from the venerable collection.

As an added twist, the performance consisted of isolated movements from several compositions—Grieg, Shostakovich, Kodaly, and, best of all, the first movement of Ravel’s String Quartet, one of my favorites. Taking them out of their broader musical environment seemed to refresh them.

And as chance would have it, we ran into five of our friends at the concert. But is that really chance? They all live near the Lakes, and three of the five are musicians.

After the concert I ran into composer David Evan Thomas in the hall where the instruments were on exhibit. I told him the tale of the LP of Ravel’s Quartet that I had in college, a Nonesuch recording with a pink hot-air balloon on the cover. He agreed that Nonesuch album covers could be outrageous.

“You should write something for the Lux,” I said.

He cleared his throat and replied, modestly, “Well, they premiered my second string quartet.”

Oh. I didn’t know.

 

   

A Cool Breeze after a Hot Night

A cool breeze after a hot night is a godsend. More than that, it’s a delight. Such a remark brings up the question of whether a delight is more, or less, than a godsend.  I would say more, but I don’t want to take up the question now. It would spoil the delight.

This morning my delight was compounded by the character of the task I’d gone outside to perform. It was the most pleasurable of all gardening tasks: to divide plants we already have and rearrange them in the garden. It’s good for the garden, good for the plants … and it’s free!

Earlier this spring, as usual, I cut back quite a bit on our buckthorn forest. I suppose we should have removed it entirely a long time ago, but it has never produced berries, and it served a purpose: it supported the grape vines that emerged, year in and year out, from its shadows.

This spring I did an especially good job of entwining last year’s vines through the arch of the garden gate, looking forward to an effect similar to the faux-arbors in old-fashioned Italian restaurants. (Vescio’s. Mama Rosa’s. Mama D’s. Where have they gone?)

However, a few days ago I noticed that all the grape-vines were dead. That was bad news. I attributed their demise to a fungus that had appeared on the main stalk, Fusicolla merismoides (commonly called "deer vomit fungus"). But as it turns out, that slimy, neon orange goo is harmless.  

The good news was that the buckthorn forest no longer served any useful purpose. So I set about the task of hacking it down, sawing off the stumps and digging out the roots. It was hard work, and I’m well aware that we’ll be pulling out buckthorn sprouts for years to come. But when I was done, we had a fairly large chunk of land—maybe six feet square—to replant however we chose.

We discussed a variety of options and finally concocted a vague plan involving pagoda dogwoods, day lilies, and hostas, all of which we have in abundance, along with a hydrangea that’s been in our “formal” backyard garden even since we moved in, getting smaller every year.

New Grapes

While removing the buckthorn, I noticed that the grapes had reseeded in a few places, and I moved those feeble sprouts to the base of a metal trellis that was leaning against our neighbor’s fence. I also came upon a forsythia that had disappeared into the buckthorns years ago. It's a shapeless specimen, but we'll keep it around until we think of something better. 

I also took pleasure in handling the dead vines. Their sinuous strength is remarkable, and it’s easy to see how useful they would have been for boatmaking, goat-pen fencing, and basketry, back in the days before synthetic materials were invented.  For a split-second I thought about hunting up my copy of John Seymour’s The Forgotten Crafts: a practical guide to traditional skills. But the moment passed.

I have no recollection of what color the day-lilies are that I rescued from under the Amur maples. They never bloomed in that mediocre location. Time will tell. Maybe.

There's plenty of work still to do. But I don't call this work. And we now have a new garden zone tucked behind the volunteer cherry orchard we've been grooming. Delights of gardening! I just might bring a chair out there and enjoy an entirely new perspective on the back yard, 

Excited by What?

Depending on your situation, or your temperament, to be “excited by nothing” might be taken to mean either that a) life has lost its sparkle, or b) you’re excited to greet the day, though you can’t put your finger on any specific reason.

These days I often find myself in the latter state. I might attribute such irrepressible glee to the clear morning light, the bright green vegetation, crabapples coming into bloom, the songs of the kinglets and white-throated sparrows that fill the air as I step out onto the deck—or all four. But the feeling runs deeper than that. Everything seems grand on such mornings, and the question becomes, “What are you going to do about it?”

Do we have to do anything about it? Going for walks, getting together with friends, listening to music, staring off into the underbrush …    

Yesterday morning I trimmed a low-hanging branch from a tree near the fence. I’ve been wanting to do that since last year. While out in the yard I spotted a “pheasant-back” mushroom that had sprung up on a tree stump amid the seas of Virginia waterleaf. A few minutes later I was back inside, googling the species to make sure of the identification. I looked high and low, and found no comment on the order of “not to be confused with the similar and highly poisonous ….”

In the afternoon Hilary and I took a stroll through Eloise Butler wildflower garden. Back home, I noticed we had quite a few red bell peppers in the fridge, and I concocted a plan. I put some early Italian music on the stereo—Landini and friends. It might just as well have been modern Italian folk music, though the harmonic progressions tended toward the pleasantly odd and strange, as if an episode of Father Cadfael were running on the TV in the next room.

I sliced up the peppers, blackened them in the broiler, then proceeded to assemble the dish we call Sicilian Peppers—black olives, anchovies, capers, oregano, onion, garlic, and balsamic vinegar.

Then I harvested the mushroom, brushed it off, and sliced it up. I took a bite, which immediately confirmed the identification: it tasted like watermelon rind. I sauteed the slices in butter, and we enjoyed a light dinner sitting in front of the doors that open out to the deck.

Spiritual Activities

A recent poll by the Pew Research Institute asked people a number of questions about their beliefs and their “spiritual life.” One of them was:

Do you do one or more of the following things for spiritual reasons at least once a week: visit a nature spot, listen to music, exercise, look inward, practice yoga or meditate.

I was surprised at the results, which were broken down by state. Mississippi topped the chart, though only 75 percent of respondents answered the question in the affirmative. New Hampshire came in dead last, at 48 percent. Minnesota ranked tenth from the bottom, at 56 percent.

Mississippians also reported the highest “spiritual well-being,” with 48 percent claiming to have achieved that state. In Minnesota, barely one in three made that claim. We hard-headed Minnesotans did even worse when it comes to “feeling the presence of something beyond this world.” Third from the bottom!

A more careful look at the results brings out a few contradictions, however. When respondents were asked if they believed in a spirit or soul, four fifths in even the most skeptical state, Oregon, answered in the affirmative. Yet only 29 percent of Oregonians believe in “the presence of something beyond this world.”

This contrast highlights the crux of the issue. How can it be that so many people believe in a spirit or soul, yet not feel the presence of something beyond this world?

The obvious answer would be that they consider spirit or soul to be entirely immanent—that is to say, of this world. But wouldn’t that be tantamount to saying that spirit is matter? For myself, when I “look within” and contemplate my own soul, the notion of “matter” never enters my mind. I might think of such things as obligation, exhilaration, promise, or contingency. I might revive the childhood question of why I happen to be me, and not someone else. Any and all of these responses produce a moral frisson that’s both exhilarating and slightly scary.

But if spirit isn’t matter, what is it? Where did it come from, and why have I been saddled with this particular speck of it? (And who is the "I" to which I referred just now?)

The Pew questionnaire wasn’t designed to probe these subtle issues, and right now I’m not in the mood for such things, either. I only wanted to observe that when I read the question with which I started this piece, my reaction was: “Only once a week? I do several of those things almost every day.” Sure. Lucky me. But can I honestly say I do them “for spiritual reasons”? Why else? Spirituality and good feeling aren’t mutually exclusive.  On the contrary, they often work very well together. 

Though I'm not entirely sold on the idea of exercise.

Do you do one or more of the following things for spiritual reasons at least once a week: visit a nature spot, listen to music, exercise, look inward, practice yoga or meditate.

 

Happy Earth Day

It’s been a brief but remarkable string of days. Why? Because the leaves are coming out. Young, bright, and translucent, they glow in the sun. Add to that a gentle breeze, with the temperature hitting that cool, comfortable mid-range, and it makes you want to shout.

Hilary and I drove down to Eloise Butler yesterday at 7:30. No one was there to open the gate, so we took a stroll through the woods, peering down at the ponds and swamps below, then crossed the parkway to the quaking bog. We chatted with a couple of birders, one of whom gave us a tip as to the location of a great-horned owl nest. We couldn’t find it, but little matter.

As the day heated up, we washed the windows, shedding our coats and swapping stocking caps for baseball caps. Later I removed the leaves from the garden. (Is it too early, or too late? I don’t know.) I couldn’t identify some of the plants at first, though they’ve been there for years. Ah, yes. Siberian bugloss, and ligularia. And our pulmonaria is boasting a single pink flower!

Further back in the woods I spotted some white trout-lilies that have been coming up every spring for more than forty years.

As if on cue, the mail carrier came by with “In the Garden,” a twenty-page pamphlet that Steve Kelley has been publishing every spring for I don’t know how long. I enjoyed working with Steve and his wife, Arla, a few years ago, on a collection of essays describing their many years at the helm of Kelley & Kelley Nursery out in Long Lake.

Nodin Press published that book. And as it happens, Earth Day is also Norton Stillman’s birthday. We took Norton out to dinner last week, less as a birthday celebration that as a thank-you for giving me the pleasure of working with him almost daily for the last few decades. We do it every year.

We took him to Vinae, where we ate peppery cucumber salad, creamy boiled cabbage, eggplant puree with purple sticky-rice, and other exotic stuff. The place was hopping. It was fun.

Earth Day is also Eddy Albert’s birthday. You probably know him as the star of Green Acres, a silly comedy that had little to do with environmental issues, I think, though the title is suggestive. But he was also an early, and a staunch, environmentalist. Albert went to Central High School in Minneapolis and the U of MN. (He studied economics.) The fact that Earth Day takes place on his birthday is no coincidence.

Norton is a bit of an environmentalist himself, though I think his greatest contribution along those lines is as the publisher of many fine books related to the outdoors. These include essay collections by Jim Gilbert, Matt Schuth, Steve Kelley, and others; and works by poets too numerous to name, nearly all of whom draw sustenance from the out-of-doors in one way or another.  

But on a day like today, a stroll through the back yard or even a simple glance out the window is as stunning as any poem. The cherry orchard is coming along nicely, there’s a robin in the birdbath, the air is cool, the cardinals are twittering, the sky is blue. And the clouds are white.  

 

Why a Duck?

We drove south along the river to meet and greet the ducks migrating north and were welcomed with open arms. Well, that’s not entirely true. The ducks were too interested in one another to pay much attention to us. In fact, they tended to drift off any time we opened a car door or pulled the spotting scope out of the trunk.

The appeal of the spring migration has several sources, prominent among them being its mystery. Why do tundra swans depart in huge numbers from Chesapeake Bay and fly 4,000 miles to the arctic wastes of northern Canada? Hilary and I were walking the upper trail along the cliffs at Frontenac State Park when we first heard their joyous shouts and honks. (You can listen to it here.) We looked up and there they were, silvery bodies no bigger than grains of rice, flying in formation, hundreds of feet above us.

Five or six flocks passed as we wandered the park. The sky was clear; the air was cold and crisp. I could feel the ardor passing back and forth as these very large birds churned their way north. The excited, clamoring voices set the mood and also told the story.

Hilary and I were also in a quietly ecstatic frame of mind simply to be out in such a beautiful morning, The bluebirds were iridescent. Field sparrows called in the distance—at a more rapid, insistent pace than they do in summer heat. Several woodpeckers were hammering away in the woods along the path to the overlook, as loud as I’ve ever heard them, but hitting notes more than an octave apart.

The previous afternoon we’d driven around Lake Pepin, and in the town of Pepin itself we came upon a huge assembly of ducks milling around near the protection of the marina. They were mostly scaup and ring-necked ducks, with a few handsome canvasbacks and redheads here and there.

On our way out to the end of the pier, we met a short, energetic, casually dressed woman returning from the breakwater. She was excited. “Oh, there are so many!” she said. “But yesterday there were even more. What are they?”

“Mostly scaup,” I told her. “Hunters call them bluebills.”

“Oh, ruddy ducks!” she exclaimed.

 “Well, no,” I corrected her. “Ruddy ducks do have blue bills, but they aren’t called ‘bluebills’. And do you see that duck with a big white ring around its beak. It’s called a ring-necked duck. But you can’t really see the ring around its neck.”

“Strange,” she said. “But I’ve got a duck with a blue bill in a plastic bag back there on shore. An eagle was eating it. It’s dead. I’m going to bury it.”

We passed the woman again on our way to the opposite end of the marina, where the ducks were now congregating, and she showed us the bird in her bag—or what was left of it. Mostly guts.

When we reached our new viewing spot, I noticed that one of the eyepieces on my binoculars had fallen off. But where? We retraced our steps around the harbor, scanning the grass and rubble along the path. No luck.

Then our new friend appeared out of nowhere and said, “Did you lose an eye ring? I found one.” She showed us where it was. How nice.

A few hours later, at the wayside rest north of Lake City, we got a much better look at another raft of ducks. To identify them is one thing. To see them well enough to thrill at their beautiful is something else again. Once again, the redheads and the canvasbacks stole the show.

Before checking into our motel on the western outskirts of Red Wing, we took a little trip away from the river and up into the hills on the urban fringe, in search of Spring Creek Scientific and Natural Area. I’d printed out some details before we left home, and we had no difficulty finding it. We parked in the single slot provided and headed down a path through the woods. Ten minutes later it opened out onto wonderful views to the west of the valley created by Spring Creek eons ago as it cut its way down through the Rochester Plateau to the Mississippi. Three ospreys drifted by overhead—or the same osprey three times? Pasque flowers were blooming inconspicuously amid the dry grasses on the rock exposures.

We spent the next day puttering south, indulging ourselves with a series of side trips and detours. We discovered a coffeeshop in Lake City we'd never seen before. I asked  the young woman behind the counter how long it had been open. She thought for a moment and said, "About eleven years, I think." 

We took Highway 84 out of Kellogg and came upon a large group of blackish ducks frolicking in a vast puddle out in a farmer’s field. They were hard to identify in the midday glare but Hilary finally noticed the flash of green on the face that convinced us they were green-winged teal. Looking up that species in the bird book she read: “Common in very shallow marshes and flooded fields.”

A few miles further south, we heard three eastern meadowlarks during a short hike through the Weaver Dunes. And our duck quest received a further boost as we wound our way though the backwaters of Goose Island County Park, a few miles south of La Crosse: Gadwalls, shovelers, blue-winged teal, and a single widgeon, his white forehead glistening in the early morning sun. “The hunters call that one a ‘bald pate,’ “I would have told our new-found friend from Pepin. “But the forehead isn’t really bald.”

Pelicans are a common sight on the river this time of year, sometimes soaring together in graceful arcs, at other times bobbing far off shore in large, brilliantly white clusters. One evening a few years ago we watched four hundred of them—I counted—come gliding in at dusk in a long line to a back bay south of Goose Island to spend the night.

Our pelican sightings on this trip were more sporadic, but we did come upon a huge congregation on our last day, just north of Winona, at McNally Landing. The wind overhead was fierce, but they all seemed to be having a good time together!

 

Mercurial Season, with Books

The first day of spring arrives at this time every year—usually more than once. I mean, one day it’s warm and sunny, the next two it’s chilly and drab. 

A few days ago the temperature topped 70 degrees for the first time. This means that everyone gets out of work at 3 p.m. At any rate, that was the rule at Bookmen, and I try to remain faithful to it, which isn’t difficult these days; I hardly have any work to do.

One gray day recently, we made an effort to cook up something special. Hilary spent the morning and a good part of the afternoon at the potting studio in Minnetonka. But we’d marked out an itinerary, and when she got home we set off.

Our first stop was Pioneer Park on the east bank of the Mississippi in Northeast. We took a stroll across the railroad bridge and made our way around Nicollet Island, on the lookout for stray buffleheads and early arriving kinglets. My thoughts turned to the history of the island I’d helped Chris and Rushica Hage put together a decade ago. Nowadays few are aware, perhaps, that most of the attractive clapboard houses we were admiring during our stroll were moved there from South Minneapolis during the 1960s as part of an urban renewal project. It remains one of the few neighborhoods in the vicinity that has been neither neglected nor overbuilt.

Our next stop was Kramarczuk’s deli, where we picked up a few tasty-looking dessert items. Then it was on to Eat My Words used bookstore, which has recently relocated to the western fringe of Southeast, right around the corner from Brasa and only a block or two from the apartment where Hilary and I lived in 1975. (Egad!) 

Hilary was looking for a copy of Wuthering Heights for her book club. No luck. "That type of thing goes pretty quick," the young man behind the counter told us. But before we left she did buy a slim paperback copy of James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times. It was an inspired choice.

On the way home we stopped briefly at Gorka Palace to pick up an order of chicken biryani and beef korma we’d ordered before leaving the house. Everything fell into place like clockwork.

After dinner we sat around in the living room reading  goofy narratives with titles like “The Night the Bed Fell on Father” and “The Car We Had to Push.” To add to the fun, I fetched copies of S. J. Perelman’s Last Laugh and Robert Benchley’s My Ten Years in a Quandary: and How They Grew from the other room.

_____________________

The next morning was as bright as the previous afternoon has been overcast, but a sharp wind made it as chilly as ever—possibly more so. In the midst of scanning the news—terrible as ever—Hilary noticed an article reporting the opening of a new bookstore in St. Anthony Park in the building where Micawber’s used to be. We decided to get out into the day and take a look.

It’s a small shop, utilizing only two of the tree rooms Micawber’s stocked. Stepping in from the bright morning, the lighting struck me as poor. And to my eyes, the shelves seemed to contain a large number of paperbacks with unpleasantly colorful pastel bindings. I don’t know why. The few used books I spotted had been stocked on rotating wooden spindles that looked cute, but tottered, creaked, and groaned when you tried to spin them.

Then again, I have so many books at home that few retail bookstores hold my interest for long.

A few minutes later, perusing the sale items in the public library a block away, I came upon a thick, good-as-new, hardcover biography of Adam Smith, priced at fifty cents. I was thumbing through it when it occurred to me that I already owned a biography of Adam Smith back home, half the size, waiting on the shelf, unread.

Later that afternoon we took one final jaunt in search of Wuthering Heights. The website of Magers and Quinn, in Uptown, reported several copies and editions in stock.

It was a pleasant drive down the parkway, though the skies had turned gray again and the ice on Cedar Lake was even grayer. Having parked the car on a side street near the store, we walked past a block of shuttered restaurants, several of which we’d had it in mind to try, but never did.

Magers and Quinn is the best bookstore around, in my opinion. And I was happy to see there were plenty of people inside, browsing. Hilary hunted down the edition of Wuthering Heights she was looking for, while I drifted through the archway to the chaotic remainder shelves on the back wall. I thumbed briefly through an astonishingly thick volume of Elizabeth Bishop’s collected letters, then hit on a less massive Oxford edition of the complete poems of Robert Herrick, priced at two dollars. Bingo!

I know next to nothing about Herrick, which is why I bought the book. I’m finding his religious poems less uncanny than those of George Herbert, and his amorous secular poems less brilliant than Donne’s. 

I’m not giving up on him yet. After all, he did write these famous lines:

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old time is still a flying;

And this same flower that smiles today,

Tomorrow will be dying.

But let's get real: he’s no match for Thurber.