www.harborlightnews.comWeek of May 7-13, 2014 Harbor Light Community Newsweekly 3B

I have been feeling restless. It happens every spring. Poets have written about it and scientists are studying it. Some call it

Spring Fever. Others claim it’s just a physiological reac-tion to longer days, more sunlight, and an increase in serotonin. Whatever it is, it makes me want to take on the world all at once. Sud-denly everything seems possible again and I am off in a mad dash to conquer everything I let slide in my winter haziness.

The problem is I don’t know where to begin, so I begin ev-erywhere. I have pulled apart all my closets, built shelves, and made giveaway piles. But my house is still a wreck because, before I finished reorganizing the closets, I moved on to power washing my porch and finding pots in order to prepare for the planting that I will do soon. I bought a new yoga DVD, and spent money on a meditation app for my phone, because isn’t it time to finally get back to the tree pose and learn how to be still with a purpose? Only I can’t seem to quiet this mind that is suddenly very AWAKE.

I pump up my bike tires because I want to ride my bike more and drive less. I study airfares because I want to travel to new places, visit old friends, plan an adventure. I Google dog trainers because I would love for Wally, my sweet lab, to finally learn how to walk properly on a leash so we can take advantage of longer days allowing him to sniff out spring. I search craigslist for new career ideas. With the sound of the first crack of ice melting, I am off. Spring is here! Summer I am coming to you!

My reading habits are also affected by this restlessness, this burst of spring energy. This month the stack of books I have torn through do not follow any sort of predictable thread. And I have not waited to finish one before I have jumped into the pages of another. I have been reading simultaneously about everything from rock and roll to the importance of maintaining our honey bee population. Throughout most of the year my reading habits are more stable, like a good musical playlist, each piece flows seamlessly into the next without jarring its audience. But the links between my literary choices as of late are more tenuous and have created an interesting dissonance that fits this restless mood I am in.

I could discuss all the books I have read in the last month but then I would have to mention that some were not so great. So in the vain of starting anew, with a positive spring out look,

I will share only the titles that have left me with the urge to call a friend and tell them about these finds.

Earlier this month, I started reading the book Things A Little Bird Told Me by Biz Stone the co-founder of Twitter. It caught my attention because it didn’t seem as self-conscious as other busi-ness minded books with stern men in suits and red power ties featured on the cover. Half of Stone’s face is on the front cover with little dialogue bubbles an-nouncing the title. The cartoon bird also featured on the cover, I would learn through reading, was one of the original drafts of the Twitter bird logo. It’s a slight book, at a little over 200 pages, but it is an interesting and entertaining read. Stories from his youth are interspersed with his career experience and used to punctuate the idea of creating one’s own path through life. Biz is representative of the new creative business mind. More Richard Branson than Donald Trump, Stone challenges conventional ways of look-ing at work and technology. He believes a person has to “have confidence in your ideas before they even exist.” And despite his admittedly dorky, techy side, he believes that “people come before technology” in a good business model. Stone’s mix of creative and business genius is inspiring and enlightening.

Even before the recent news articles about the plight of the honey bees started going around via email and social media, I picked up the national bestseller The Beekeepers La-ment by Hannah Nordhaus. Somehow this book slipped by me when it was originally published in 2011. But the true story of How One man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America caught my attention as I have been daydreaming of farmers markets and planting flowers. While this book focuses on third generation beekeeper, John Miller, and the now com-mon practice of trucking bees across the country to farmers in need of these pollinators, it is an eye-opening account of the tenuous hold we have on these important creatures. Deadly epidemics and colony collapses, which have stumped even the savviest of scientists, had my heart pounding for our future; so much so that I had to take a break midway through this book to start another.

There Goes Gravity by Lisa Robinson was just the book to keep my mind from buzzing with worry. Robinson, contributing editor at Vanity Fair for the last fourteen years, is a source of

great knowledge when it comes to the last four decades of rock and roll history. A journalist at heart, she has lived the rock and roll life as a true insider gaining behind-the-scenes ac-cess to the lives of some of the greatest names in music history. As an editor for several rock magazines, and then the New York Post and New York Times Syndicate, she traveled with the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin at the height of their careers. She introduced Lou Reed to David Bowie and counts Patti Smith and Annie Leibovitz as some of her closest girlfriends.

A woman allowed in the boys club and respected as a friend and confidant is novel. Most rock and roll books written by women come from a devoted groupie or ex-wife. Robinson, still married to the same man who introduced Janis Joplin to a small college crowd back in 1969, was not there for anything but the love of good music. From the beginning she was pres-ent as a reporter. She was watching more than participating in the antics of the creative, and often drug fueled, times. As a keen observer of these bands and personalities, she proves to be an authority on how they’ve shaped the music world. This book had me turning up the music as I opened the windows to let the fresh air move through my house.

After being inundated with emails and posts on various social media sites concerning the plight of our most esteemed pollinators, I returned to the pages of Nordhaus’ book for more answers. I feel more informed after having read this book and see beekeepers like John Miller as the rock stars of the agricultural world deserving of just as much interest and publicity as Jimmy Page and Keith Richards.

So it seems there is a nonfiction thread that connects these books, which is fitting in this month of May when mothers are celebrated and wisdom imparted on the graduating youth through commencement speeches.

Each of these books speaks to lessons that the best mothers and commencement speakers try to impart.

Be creative and persistent as you carve your own path. Be bold and loud and take chances. Turn up the music.Be stewards of this earth and do not take for granted even

the smallest of creatures. Have fun but pay attention.Be kind. (Sigh) Don’t you just love books?

Celebrating Words, Literature, Authors, Libraries, Booksellers and Reading!

With special Harbor Light Newspaper LitChat Editor/Columnist Emily Meier, emilym@ncpublish.com

Between the Covers | 152 E. Main St., Harbor Springs | 231.526.6658 | books@btcbookshs.com

As part of our ongoing efforts to honor reading and writing, “LitChat” will be included in our newspaper on the first Wednesday of every month. Emily Meier, a writer and reader with deep connections to northern Michigan, is our LitChat editor.L i t C h a t Overheard

in the bookstore

Emily Meier and Wally

Email your questions and comments to Emily Meier

emilym@ncpublish.comor write to her c/o

Harbor Light Newspaper, 211 E. Third St.Harbor Springs, MI 49740

A Bird, The Bees, and Rock and Roll

During a visit from Mr. Bower’s Blackbird Elementary School Kindergarten class:

Mr. Bower: Class, did you know that the bookstore will be moving to a spot upstairs on Main Street?

Daniel Kelbel: Oh no! Are you moving to Kelbel’s Pharmacy?

“I got my tax return! Here are the books I want.”

-Cyndi Kramer

MovingMonth!

Between the Covers will be closing at noon on May 13th to begin their move to 106 E Main! Please visit when they reopen on May 20th. Keep up with the move on Facebook.

Commencement AddressesIf This Isn’t Nice, What Is? (Vonnegut)This is Water (Wallace)What Now? (Patchett)Congratulations, by the Way (Saunders)Make Good Art (Gaiman)You Are Not Special (McCullough)

Business SenseLean In for Graduates (Sandberg)Talk Like TED (Gallo)Doodle Revolution (Brown)

InspirationHelp Thanks Wow (Lamott)Alchemist (Coelho) - Autographed copies of the anniversary edition available, while supplies last

Going Places (Reynolds)Letters to a Young Poet (Rilke)Opposite of Loneliness (Keegan)Very Fairy Princess, Graduation Girl (Andrews)

Artistic PursuitsTrickster’s Hat (Bantock)Filmmaker Says (Stern)Outside the Lines (Hong-Parretta)Guerilla Art Kit (Smith)

For FunWordbirds (Schillinger)Drop Caps series (from Penguin Books)S (Abrams & Dorst)Colorstrology (Bernhardt)

Giving the gift of words on paper...Suggestions provided by Katie Capaldi, Between the Covers

For the Graduate... For Mother’s Day...Seeing Flowers (Llewellyn)Gardener of Versailles (Baraton)Yarn Works (Johnson)My Paris Kitchen (Lebovitz)Egg (Ruhlman)New Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (Madison)Living Life in Full Bloom (Murray)I Heart My Little A-Holes (Alpert)Well-Read Women (Hahn)All the Light We Cannot See (Doerr) - autographed copies available while supplies last

Exquisite Book of Paper Flowers (Cetti)

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“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” -Hal Borland