Melville in Hand

My 52nd birthday passed in October. My boys were very pleased with their gift to me, which I have in hand in the photo, taken in our living room in Okemos. The book is an illustrated edition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, my favorite novel (even though it's hardly a novel in the technical sense, which is a subject for a different blog). I own several editions of the work and have read it many times, but I had requested a nice copy. There is nothing like a fine book in one's hands. I read a few passages to the boys. Logan has already read the work, but he has yet to make it his own. Note the stains on the knees. These are work clothes I am wearing, stuff I put on when doing the repairs and maintenance around the house. It was a Saturday night, and I hadn't yet changed out of the work clothes at the end of a day of putzing around the house.

A Lingering Fall

I haven't been writing much, it's true, but this transition time is always difficult for me. I find it hard to restart my interest in doing posts about my southern Michigan life in the fall and doing the opposite in the spring, writing post about northern Michigan when I go north to Copper Harbor for the summer tourist season. The fall has been strangely (though the condition is certainly welcome) persistent for many weeks down here in Okemos and throughout mid-Michigan. The weather has been average, but the leaves have been hanging on the trees for a long, long time. Several trees in my yard are just now dropping their leaves, about 4 weeks later than usual. Here is a shot on the MSU campus from a couple weeks ago of a thicket of beech trees on the Circle, the center of the MSU campus and the site of its first buildings (it's known in some old books about the college as the Sacred Circle). These trees have been colorful for more than a month now.