Friday, January 27, 2012

Snow Day?


It's a  beautiful day in the neighborhood. Snow falls with serious intent in enormous flakes that remind me of the old grade school craft of folding white paper in complex configurations and snipping fanciful shapes from the edges in the futile hope of replicating nature. On the one hand it makes me want to declare a Snow Day. Remember snow days when you were a kid? My sister and I would jump out of bed, brave our unheated bedrooms,  look outside at the eerie white expanse of Kenyon Street and run to the radio in hopes that WHLO Akron (Hello Radio) would save us from the endless monotony that was school in the 60’s. These days there’s nothing to be saved FROM – it’s more  a matter of the snow channeling silent permission to break from routine and instead choose something I love almost as much but never have time to pursue. On the other hand though, the  need to list, take pictures, cull dead stock, ACCOMPLISH something shrieks in my head like a siren
Cullng dead stock does please me though. Yesterday I removed most of my fiction, some of which has been online for 15 years. Yes, it sells occasionally, but I’m annoyed with a list that doesn’t in its entirety reflect what I’m about these days. I began in 1997 as a  commodity bookseller as did most internet start-ups, but over the years my love of the new and shiny gave way to the call of the old, the pleasure of scholarship, the delight of paper in all its guises. In making this shift the world both expanded and contracted. While ABE grew for me, alibris narrowed down. I still sell there, but my enthusiasm for them has badly waned. I guess to explain that you would have to understand that to the core of my being I am fiercely independent.  I could rant about all the things that drive me insane, but there’s little point. You either live with them. Or you don’t.

Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you about Wednesday’s auction, did I? I got surprisingly luckier than I imagined I would, but it dragged on endlessly and we had to leave no later than 6:30 to get back to Akron to the NOBS book fair committee meeting. Three and a half hours after start time they had so much stuff  left it likely took another three hours to plow through it unless they piled it all up in crazy, unrelated lots and took whatever they could get just to be free of it. We stayed as long as we dared, but I ended up having to leave behind a box of ten pristine copies of the Ladies Home Journal from 1895, a golf book from the 1890’s, and a strange little book buried in a box of junk that I bet went for a song. I can’t remember the title, but I’ve sold it twice at $65. The first time I got it by chance and had no clue that it was a desirable antiquarian Jehovah’s Witness title until I researched it. Now I would recognize it anywhere, though I can’t even tell you what it’s about, much less name it. It’s very unique, that’s all I can say.

Anyway, on the plus side, I bought a flat of Canton, Ohio ephemera from the early 1900’s, primarily dealing with the assassination of  President William McKinley who was from Canton where this auction was also held. In Canton they devour this stuff despite the fact that there’s enough of it there to go door to door and give every resident a piece of it. I also bought 67 holiday postcards, again from the early 1900’s, some of which are pictured below, AND a pretty little Catholic bridal  prayer book made in Belgium which sports a sparkly celluoid cover that replicates mother of pearl. It still nestles in it original box and appears unused (1939) with no writing on the page designated for information on the wedding.

Yesterday's mail also brought me another ebay purchase of note. This one, The City of the Saints, dates from 1906 and celebrates the wonders of Salt Lake City, Utah. Unlike others of its ilk, it actually has 64 oversized pages loaded with real history and meaningful photographs. I’m very pleased with it. Since we last talked I also bought a two volume antiquarian set on a trip to Greece (1830’s as I recall) and another two volume set from the 1890’s about  a woman traveler’s adventures on the Nile. Oddly, I harbor a fondness for vintage travel which is truly perverse seeing as how I’m not at all crazy about travel in real life. Anyway, I don't have them yet, so the outcomes remain to be seen.

Just this second I peeked behind the shade in my office to take a picture of Winter Wonderland only to find that the snow has vanished, replaced with the rain and mud seen above. I guess there’s no decision to be made after all. No snow day for me today!
But you know what? I suspect there wouldn’t  have been anyway. When you love what you do you really don't need a Snow Day.


2 comments:

Hilda said...

You're a fortunate woman - getting up every morning loving what she does each day.

tess said...

I really am, Hilda, because I have also have been through the flip side. I was director of sales and marketing for a senior care complex and it was like working inside a pressure cooker. So I I'm very blessed and ver grateful.