Opening A New Window

As I write this I smell like salad from having doused my sunburned neck with vinegar to stop the intense itch. It began last week at the Saline, Michigan Celtic festival inspite of #50 sunscreen which my youngest grandson adorably  calls “sunscream” and got angrier this weekend at the Irish music festival in Berea. Oddly, it’s worse in front than in back and makes me look faintly diseased, but of course things could be much worse. I could be peeling like old paint in a windstorm.

Actually I’m pretty happy today. Yesterday I finished the dreaded Ohio sales tax which is always worse in July  than in January because there are two forms in July – one for online sales and one for the Akron antiquarian show. Progress is also being made on the house, though I am far from getting the house BACK.  But I do appreciate my gorgeous new windows and an island with a Norwegian blue granite countertop so beautiful the Viking gods think it’s an altar.

This weekend I went to two estate sales which left me feeling as though Scotty beamed me up and dropped me off in the good old days. I spent $400, but I also got a lot of old books and paper at both. AND the very best thing I got was the cheapest – two dollars!. It’s a thin  hardback with just 36 pages written by Giovanni Baptista Lemperti in 1905  called The Technics of Bel Canto. The second I saw that baby I buzzed louder than a hive of hornets. There are anatomical drawings and much information from a great singing teacher on the art of Italian opera. Bel Canto means beautiful singing. Another cheapie I love is a little booklet called The Organ in Art, A Brief History, again from the early 1900’s. This one discusses artistically designed  organs made by the Wirsching Organ Company of Salem, Ohio and  designed by George A. Audsley and J. Burr Tiffany of The Art Organ Company of New York City. Both are scarce and the latter has great photographs.

I would estimate that half of what I bought will be listed online and the other half will go to the antiques mall. This month is shaping  up to be my best ever there, but of course part of it is due to the sale of the gorgeous green chairs. Still, it got me wondering about something I’ve toyed with before and never did. I have now decided to shut down alibris entirely and stick with ABE, Biblio, my own site, and my secret site and replace alibris by trading up to a bigger booth at the mall – not a SECOND booth as I’d been thinking about previously, but a bigger one. I have the bookcases now and there’s a booth open down my row again, but I still want to stockpile some more stuff first. At the rate these things turn over that old sense of urgency no longer harangues me, so I can take my time. I have no idea what it will actually cost, but I suspect  the big one will be at least $100 per month more than the one I have, but alibris costs $40 a month, plus 15-20 per cent in commission and is becoming less and less viable for me due to my proliferation of old stuff. Any site which asks you when you list an item by hand if you really mean to price it in three figures is REALLY not geared to the collector market. I think maybe this move could free up some time for me to write again and do my art both of which I feel strongly drawn to right now.

If it sounds like I’m easing out of the book biz banish the thought. What I’m doing is easing into  a whole new exciting change. Never will I ease out. In fact, I’ll have to be CARRIED out. All I’m saying is I need to cut the stress and be creative again. I don’t enjoy alibris and their many affiliates one iota and I’m at a place in my life where I no longer feel a need to play with people and entities I don’t like.

It reminds me of the old Bob Dylan song, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” For a long time I’ve felt that there might be a better way for me to be a bookseller. Now I’m finally ready to fling open a new window and see what the breeze blows in.