Mystery of the Chinese Autograph Book

In my last post I mentioned an autograph book from Chester, Connecticut we acquired as part of a collection. Ever since, I've found myself thinking about it until nothing would do but I find it again, buried in a pile of books yet to be listed. It's a dark, dreary day and the battered old black book beckoned like a ship filled with exotic spices and rare silks. Who had owned it and why are there so many photos of young Chinese men mixed in with those of Yankees from both Chester and Hoadley, Massachusetts?

The year it began was 1878 and most entries are from that time, but a few date from 1881-82 and one from 1901. A few pages also appear to be missing, so if there was ever an ownership page it has long since fluttered away, leaving in its wake a mystery now more than a century old. Beneath a photo of a young Chinese man is written "Portrait of Uncle Y.C. Wong", oddly dated 1901, but not located on the last page as one would expect since it's the most recent entry and the only one not signed by the person in the picture. A few pages later I found another photo, undated, which reads "Your cousin, Lew Yuk Lin, Xaing Shan, China." So then. The owner of the book was Chinese, most likely male.

Because the entries by Chinese men are scattered among those of New Englanders it took a second reading to notice something else. While many of the Chinese entries state both Chinese and American locations, all of the ones dated 1881 are signed with only a Chinese address and almost all make reference to Christmas Eve.

"Such is life, F.W. Loo, Sinn Wai, China, Christmas Eve 1881".

"Remember your first Christmas in Tientsin, Che Sun Chu, Canton, China December 24, 1881."

I had been vaguely wondering whether Chester's river location and shipbuilding history played a role in the presence of these young Chinese men in New England, but the reference to Christmas suddenly seemed like a game changer. Quickly I googled "American missionary activity China 19th century" and sure enough up popped an article explaining an evangelical fervor to convert the Chinese to Christianity. It sprang from the work of Hudson Taylor who had arrived in China in 1854 at the age of twenty-one under the auspices of the Chinese Evangelization Society. Six years later he was back in England in poor health, but with no slackening of religious zeal. Article after article flowed from his pen inspiring legions of missionaries from both England and the United States to head for Asia. Could it be that the book owner's family back in China had been converted and then sent their son to America to train as a missionary himself?

The answer of course is elusive, forever lost to time. But the fact that the last photo was added thirty years after the first ones made me think that whether he was part of the Protestant missionary movement, or not, he did not return to China to live. Then again, maybe he did and the last photo was added by someone else and the book's original owner was none other than Uncle Y.C. Wong!

Of course my first guess might also have been right and the owner had descended from a Chinese sailor who had signed on to an American whaler or come to work in Chester’s shipyards. Since immigration from China was not prohibited until 1882, this was legally possible even though Chinese sailors were not as plentiful as those from Portugal and Cape Verde and I could find no reference to Chinese shipbuilders in Chester. Or maybe, as so many Chinese immigrants did, this family had arrived on American shores hoping to find work constructing the transcontinental railroad.

Reluctantly, I closed the book resigned to not knowing. There’s a peculiar sadness in that of course, but the little black book imparts an important lesson. We can't rely on technology to serve as a bridge to the distant future. Blogs, emails and digital photos can all be lost in a heartbeat. If we are to meet the next century and insure that it meets us we have to leave a hard copy. Though I never learned the name or the fate of my book owner, I met him nonethless in the admiration of his many friends. I, for one, would very much like to be met like that. Wouldn't you?

Post-Its -- Notes From A Book Collection

There's nothing like buying a large collection of books to rev up the internal engine. For weeks after we've boxed and trucked it home I'm up before the crack of dawn to get the orders wrapped so I can poke around in the boxes and play with the books. Collections tend to contain a motley mix of the good, the VERY good, the bad, and the downright ugly, largely because we make it a rule not to cherry pick and leave the previous owner with a bunch of duds that can't be sold. We offer one price for the lot and deal with it as it comes. Sure, it's a lot of work -- imagine the summer we had 35,000 volumes! -- but it's good work, fun work, work that's not really work at all, though I'm sure if he were looking over my shoulder Eric would have something to say about THAT. The division of labor around here goes something like this -- I'm The Decider and he's the Book Mover.

Anyway, our current collection was bought in April after the antiquarian show in Akron where we, along with all the other dealers, were approached by a man needing to sell his mother's books. He'd moved them from Connecticut, but was now himself moving out of state and having nightmares at the thought of hauling them a second time. It's a relatively small collection of 2000 volumes, give or take, mostly focused on early American history, New England history, and genealogy. What keeps it interesting is the occasional surprise -- an old blacksmith's ledger from the
1850's, an autograph album with tinted photos of teenagers from Chester, Connecticut in the 1870's, made all the more fascinating by the addition of pictures and signatures of young Chinese men living in China!

Like all collections, this one is not without its quirks. I actually found it sort of charming that two whole boxes contained nothing but commmon books by Kenneth Roberts, six or seven of each title, a testament to the collector's admiration for her favorite author. Fortunately, there was one rare title in the mix -- but of course there was only one copy of it -- which we already sold to an antiquarian dealer in Germany. We also have lots of customers at the store who can't get enough of Roberts, so it's easy to be magnanimous about the excess.

What I am NOT finding charming, however, is the quirk pictured in the photo to the left. Don't for a minute think it's photo-op I set up, or a nuisance confined to a few books. I swear on a stack of Harvard Classics that absolutely every single one of the 2000 books is stuffed with slips of paper and post-it notes. Every. Single. One.

Don't get me wrong -- I am very grateful to have this collection, but I'm struggling to find an upside to the post-it notes. The best I can do is this. By buying these wonderful books I learned something very important which I will pass along. Post-it notes are not always compatible with certain kinds of paper. The only salvation is the hair dryer to slowly loosen them without damaging the pages. Very soon I'll be at Target shopping for a new hair dryer though. Our old Conair burned out this morning.

Bookselling In Real Life

Ever since kindergarten when it became apparent that there are gradations of perfection in coloring and pasting I've been a Type A obsessive workaholic, so the fact that these traits have followed me into my fifth decade (okay, almost sixth, but let's not talk about it) is probably no big surprise. I do bookselling like I do everything else -- by total immersion. So to take a weekend off to go to Michigan to see our oldest daughter and her family, whom I love beyond words, is a classic push-pull situation if ever there was one.


We hit the road early last Saturday, Eric looking ahead to the festivities and me fretting over not shipping orders. But, as always, as soon as he popped an audiobook into the CD player at the Ohio Turnpike I was transported to Michigan mode. The problem with Michigan mode is that I'm fine as long as there's nonstop activity, but give me some downtime and I'm on Moira's laptop checking to see what's happening in the book world. This time I did pretty well though. No sneak peaks until after Tyler's soccer game, we'd swung on the swings at the park, visited with Mary, Moira's mother-in-law, and Dylan at age one had been hugged, kissed and played with until he fell asleep face down on the family room floor from sheer granny exhaustion. Only then did I log into my web server to check my email. Four orders from ABE, one from alibris ....

"Don't do that, Gran! We're ordering pizza and I want you to watch Karate Kid with me."

One look at Tyler's six year old face puckered with consternation and I closed the laptop without even confirming the orders and put in my own order for a veggie with everything. By the time the pizza arrived and the movie was ready to roll, even Baby was ready to party. I never thought of the books again until I was ensconced in the guest room several hours later without a book to read. In the throes of my early morning angst over not shipping I'd forgotten to pack my book. I could borrow one, but I knew from past experience that the offerings on Warwick Drive were confined to the definitive works of Anne McCaffrey and Nora Roberts. Given THAT, what could a bookseller do but contemplate the precarious future of bookselling until she fell asleep?

The next thing I knew Moira was at the bedroom door informing us that the tornado sirens had sounded and we needed to hit the basement -- NOW. So off we flew, two sleeping little boys in tow, to sit on the old leather couches in our jammies and watch omnious red splotches on the TV screen. By the time we got an all-clear forty-five minutes later I was quietly freaking out. A year ago we'd had a mini-flood and lost some of our inventory. What was happening in Ohio? Torrential rain? Tornadoes? A plague of locusts? HELP! I NEED TO GO HOME NOW!

Back in the guest room I inwardly had two nervous breakdowns and one general meltdown while Eric snored beside me. "Do you think everything's okay at home?" I whispered when I couldn't stand another second of solitary hysteria.

The fact that he answered immediately was less than comforting. "I don't know. It crossed my mind that we could have trouble."

I thought about the flood, books floating, the roto-thingy guys stopping work to argue over who was going to kill a #$%@% spider .... Oh God. We need to go HOME! But then I thought of Dylan's birthday party the next day. My sweet baby turning one. How often will THAT happen? If the books were going to get wet they were probably already wet, so going home wouldn't change a thing. Yes, but the mess and the not knowing was too awful... Back and forth it went until around two a.m. when a baby who smiles like Charlie Brown trumped the books, wet or dry.

In the end I decided to pull a Scarlett O'Hara and not think about it until after the party. And for once that's exactly what I did which is how I came to have these cute pictures. As for what went on in northeastern Ohio while I was fretting about biblical weather -- nothing.

Breaking Up With Ebay

My love affair with ebay has been over since the big 2008 restructuring, yet I have hung on tenaciously, perpetually hoping that this change, or that one, would restore balance to our relationship. Then in March 2010 they announced that all sellers, whether they offered Buy It Now listings, maintained a store, or conducted auctions would get equal visibility. Right on cue the sultry voice of Etta James crooned "At Last" in my ear as I waltzed around my office intoxicated with joy. So much joy, in fact, that I sprang for a premium store.

Never mind that previously I had been promised the moon for having a Top Rated Seller Badge only to wind up with not even a crumb of green cheese. But really, I asked myself, what did a tiny betrayal like that matter in the larger framework of love? Nothing! Just a little blip. Ebay had erred and was now ready to attone. Besides, ebay and I had a HISTORY. We'd connected immediately the first day I opened my store and within no time were a power couple. I even had the little icon to prove it.

But enough of the past. Launch day was in April, so early that morning I fired up the computer. Voila! Three nice sales rained down like a fountain of champagne. "We're back!" I shouted over the phone in my husband's ear. "WE'RE BACK!" Yes, we were back all right -- for about three days and then we really fell back -- to nothing. I downgraded to a basic store and waited out the rest of the month. Had it not been for a three volume history of Martha's Vineyard and a collection of WWI pamphlets it would have been the worst month in my history with ebay. As it turned out, it was the second worst month.

At first I was shell-shocked. Then I sprang into action, typing in my own book titles only to be informed that there were zero copies. A little message flashed to alert me of a close match, then disappeared, sending me down, down, down past the list of ads where I discovered that it was actually an EXACT match and -- are you surprised?-- it was MINE. And so, just like that, ebay and I broke up.

My feedback and my Top Rated seller ribbon are still there because ebay gives you 30 days to reconsider. But truly there's nothing to reconsider. The fact is I'm tired of the endless changes and rules, the stress, the rising rates billed as the lowest ever, the betrayals both large and small, and the paternalistic attitude that sapped the lifeblood out of what had once been fun.

Besides, I'm already seeing somebody new. It's not serious yet, but I am reasonably committed and hopeful, if for no other reason than the fact that this one at least has a sense of humor!

Our First Book Fair

Eric and I have been online booksellers for thirteen years, but the 2010 NOBS (Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society) book fair in Akron marked the first time we packed up the treasures and put them on exhibit. Each year we were asked whether we would set up a booth, but always I demurred, mumbling something about it being “too hard on the books.” The truth was much blunter -- I flat-out wasn’t ready.

I had devoured enough books about bookselling in the grand old tradition to know that even being a voracious reader does not bestow qualification. The bookseller’s path is long and arduous with few markers along the way to measure enlightenment. Even now I haven’t a clue whether or not I know enough, primarily because I still can’t define “enough.” All I know is that this year when the application arrived I felt like maybe it was okay to show up and hang a shingle.

Whenever I try to describe the show itself it’s easy to veer toward the histrionic, so I’m going to make a big effort to contain myself here. Let’s just say that, for me, the fair was a giant coming of age party. From the moment I stood back and admired our books all shined up and ready for perusal I was zapped with an endorphin jolt that lasted the entire two days. Think Christmas when you’re six, falling in love, the arrival of your children, skyrockets on the Fourth of July -- and then put a party hat on the whole shebang and pop a champagne cork. Better yet, just imagine yourself in orbit!

From the first sale of the show, School Architecture; Or Contributions to the Improvement of Schoolhouses in the United States, to the last, a first edition Mark Twain, we engaged in conversations that ranged from my crush on Elbert Hubbard to the Lost Generation with a leisurely segue into Salvador Dali’s cookbook and the beauty of machining catalogs from the 1920’s. What exquisite pleasure it was to turn off the internet for awhile and connect in person with readers, among whom I discovered two online customers, one from Georgia, and the other from right next door in Wadsworth.

In several ways the fair reminds me of that famous line attributed to Goethe, “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” In today’s electronic world it is supremely bold to offer three-dimensional books for sale in their time-honored state, yet powerful too, as we quietly assert the need to hold the wisdom of the human continuum in the palms of our hands. As for magic, the books themselves are magical to those who love them. Books inform, entertain, comfort, embolden and inspire us. But I must admit that I did notice one other sneaky little magical aspect that is a bit less lofty. Books that are packed up to go to the fair, no matter how long they’ve hung around, are imbued with immense desirability for online customers once inside a packing crate. Ditto on the return of the unsold ones. But transfer those same books from the packing crates to their former shelves and –poof! – no more fairy dust until next year.

Almost Two Years Later -- I'm Here

I knew I would not be winning any perfect attendance awards, but I was shocked when a.) I could not remember how to access my own blog and b.) I finally got on it only to find that the last time I wrote was September, 2008. Oh, the water under the dam since then! Or is it over the dam? I never can remember that damn phrase, but no matter -- I'm here now resolving to be more constant than in the past.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to catch up (like anyone remembers what needs catching up on). I am still a bookseller -- thirteen years now -- a writer finally dabbling with a novel, and Gran to a new baby boy named Dylan who just flew in from Korea on angel wings in April to join his big brother Tyler who somehow got to be six despite my fervent wish for him to stay small. Since I last wrote we also bought several large book collections, most of which are gone now, and I was asked to be a board member for NOBS, acronym for the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society. The latter is so very pleasing to me, a sort of rite of passage which makes me feel less of a wannabe and more of a player in the world of serious bookselling.

Of course the world of books has turned on its ear since I last wrote, but then the whole WORLD has turned on its ear, so why shouldn't the book world keep it company? Sometimes I am as afraid as I was in September 2008 when I wrote the last blog about cooking for the kids running the Obama campaign here in Medina. But mostly I try to be hopeful about the world, the babies, the books and the future. That's all we can do I guess -- have hope, share both the bounty and the necessities, and enjoy life's pleasures even though there are e-books and free books, electronic readers and all sorts of new gadgetry that may put me out of business. I will comment on them later, but suffice it to say that for now I am happy to still be a bookseller of the "old school" with a little help from technology and my younger daughter's marketing degree -- which, I might add -- was paid for by the BOOKS.

So, anyway, I'm back and hoping to stay a little longer this time. There's always an endless pot of coffee -- black and hot the way God intended -- and endless things to talk about. So if anyone wants to join me please do. I'll even provide sugar and cream if needed.

Cooking In the Storm

Two packages chicken breasts
Two heads Bibb lettuce
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms

It’s a dark, damp morning, the day after the first presidential debate, and I am writing my grocery list in my head. The house is still, the silence all-encompassing, a microcosm of the silence of a nation holding its breath. My fears today are many – some justified, some no doubt extrapolation – but I seem unable to delineate one from another. And so I do the one thing I know how to do in both good times and bad. I cook.

1 bottle dry cooking sherry
1 large bunch red grapes

My little grandson, who came to us four years ago by way of south Korea, is four and half now. He’s in kindergarten where he’s learning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The big words are tricky and the concepts mud puddles. But he stamps his feet in them and splashes until he’s drenched with their majesty -- the rest will come later. For now it’s enough to put his hand over his baby heart and cut to the chase, “Flag of the United States of America! Liberty and justice for all!”

2 cucumbers
1 container Parmesan cheese

Early this morning I saw two deer. In the space of time before the sun has fully risen deer blend so seamlessly with the backdrop of trees they are nearly invisible. If you want to see them – really see the grace and shape of who they are-- you have to look hard. If you focus on their color you’ll miss them every time.

1 loaf artisan bread
2 large tomatoes

Words tumble over words in my head, but I can’t bring them to my mouth, can barely force them out through my fingertips. I should be out canvassing the neighborhood, signing up voters, working the phone banks. I’m a world class talker – ask anyone who knows me. I could talk the legs off a donkey and sell the pope a double bed, but right now all I can do is cook. So I will do that then. And when I have chicken, and rice pilaf with mushrooms, salad, and bread, I will pack them all up and take them to the Democratic party headquarters to feed the young volunteers who are here from Chicago, Rhode Island and California. They crash on family room floors, eat whatever presents itself, work until the wee hours and then repeat it all over again day after day. They breathe life into the words my grandson shouts and the ones I can’t articulate.

1 bag celery
2 green peppers

I am silent today. My voice is stilled by anger, but mostly by grief. I am sick over what’s happening to our country, sick that Barrack Obama must contend with the circus his opponent is trying to make of the election during a time when our country is literally cracking open like an overripe pomegranate. We are bleeding, we are gushing blood like a geyser, and his opponent and the woman he is using for his own selfish means, are apparently insulated from the spatter. But we are not insulated. We are black, and white, Asian and Hispanic, sick and well, Christian and not Christian, straight and gay, poor and middle class, employed and unemployed, young and old. If we don’t succeed in making a difference this November we will continue to have no buffer from the raging storm of greed and lies they so neatly couch in words like faith and Christian. The last safe haven may be this kitchen. And so I will go there today and cook for Barrack Obama.

Ike's Last Breath

The last breath of Hurricane Ike blew over the Midwest rather spectacularly on Sunday. Nancy and I usually walk five miles on Sunday morning, but decided to delay until afternoon to get a few things done at home. Nancy showed up around five and almost immediately the many trees in my backyard started rockin’ and rollin.’

“I think we’re cooked,” I said. “Might as well sit down and talk.”

CRASH! The outer door of the screened porch flapped in the wind like Sarah Palin under the scrutiny of Charlie Gibson. Porch trees and plants fell like dominoes and one of several small decorative windows at the top of the screens imploded, leaving the brick floor littered with blue glass and smashed wood. I grabbed the door while Nancy saved a decorative stained glass panel and together we moved all the furniture as far back against the wall of the house as we could. At this point Nancy decided maybe she’d better make sure her own hatches were battened down and made a dash for the car. I stood at the door in amazement and growing apprehension. Our trees are not saplings. If they fell … My next thought was my husband who was in Indiana doing an outdoor show for his business. According to the Weather Channel, Cincinnati was hardest hit and he was but one hour away from Cincy.

By the time Ike gave up the ghost power was out in much of the area and the yard looked like a war zone. Eric had managed to get through on his cell phone earlier and all was well in Indiana, though the connection was so full of cracks all I heard was “me … okay now … okay?” By ten p.m. I had the glass cleaned up on the porch and Mickey the cat ensconced once again to take in the night air. The real work began yesterday.

By eight I was outside with a stack of leaf bags and a rake. A huge branch I’d heard glance off the office window was now impaled in the fence. I may be a hundred pound weakling, I but sang that old Helen Reddy song in my head “I am woman, hear me roar …“ and wrestled it out and around the house to the curb. Meanwhile next door, a crew showed up at the neighbor’s house to perform the same ablutions. I chatted with the workers awhile and then we all got down to business – they with their rip-roaring machines and me with my rake and leaf bags. The day was dank and overcast, but a sudden flash of joy filled me from the top of my head to my sandaled feet. We made it! We survived! The wet leaves and debris smelled fresh and earthy and I breathed in their scent glad to the core of my being that I was out there doing what I was doing.

Not long after this, the owner of the house with the crew strolled outside with his coffee for a chat. I know he thinks I’m a tree-hugger and he’d be right about that, especially since it was my trees that had left their body parts all over his bare, green expanse of lawn, but I think he sort of likes me anyway. We talked about the damage and I said, “There’s sure a lot to be done out here, but then that’s the price of paradise, right?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say THAT,” he replied.

I guess paradise is wherever you find it. For me it's right here on this street in this town in Ohio.

Death, Stories And Fresh Eggs

My mother used to say that death always comes in threes. This year two local booksellers died, one whom I didn’t know, and Doug Gunn whom I did. I miss the latter at book sales and will no doubt feel it keenly next week when we go to the Wooster AAUW sale. Last year I picked up a book there and heard a voice behind me cry, “Stop! Don’t do it!” I turned around and there was Doug laughing at my near mistake. He’d almost bought the same dud-in-disguise himself the very same morning. The last time I saw Doug was last fall at the Ashland sale when we both crowed with delight when they announced a ban on scanners. Doug was the first “old school” bookseller who made me feel like we were classmates, something I appreciate as much now as I did all those years ago.

I guess my mother was right about death pulling a trifecta though because on Monday Rob Levandoski, writer and bookseller (Two Bird Books of Akron), died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Rob’s third novel “Fresh Eggs” was a 2004 Pulitzer prize nominee. The New York Times called him “a distinctive literary voice deserving to be more widely known.” I agree, which is why I think nature, God, the Universe, whatever, Whoever, got it wrong this time. But of course I don’t get a vote.

Last evening my friend Nancy, who is another local writer, and I went to calling hours at the funeral home. It had been a dark, rainy, glum day straight out of one of those Victorian English movies where they shoot from above, panning a sea of black umbrellas at the graveyard. For two days all Nancy and I could do was email each other endlessly. And yet for all that outpouring of emotion we were still shocked, sad, and so sorry for Carol, his wife of only five years. As we knew it would be, it was a rough go, and there were tears involved (mostly mine as I can cry on a dime), but we thought of a funny story about Rob and laughed our heads off too.

A few years back, Rob, Nancy, and another local writer, Betty Wetzel (who has also since died), were asked to be part of a panel discussion at the library about the writing life. Before it began, the moderator, who would never be accused of having a sense of humor, asked the trio if their publicists burdened them with too many events.

“Are you kidding? I had to sleep with mine just to get this gig,” Nancy deadpanned.

Picking it right up, Rob asked Nancy, “Do you think maybe you could sleep with mine too?”

Betty, a sly wit with a great Olympic laugh, cracked up and pretty soon everybody but the moderator was on a roll. Poor guy -- he looked like he was trapped with three live grenades and no access to the SWAT team, which I guess in a way he was.

I love that. Not only is it quintessential Rob, but it’s also the Ghunga Din of stories. We told it, and for one normal second laughed in the face of death. The best stories are like that though. They embolden us, make us strong, brave, and hopeful that there really is life not only after death, but in the face of it. Somebody famous (I forget who it was and I am not in the mood for research) said, “Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.” I don’t know about genius, but I’ll certainly attest to magic and, most definitely, power. Without the stories, without all the pictures Carol had placed around the room, without the books and newspaper articles, Rob's first press pass, and his old antique typewriter -- all stories in their own right -- how would we ever have dealt with that much sorrow? Stories not only embolden us -- they save us too.

P.S. I just opened Rob's book "Fresh Eggs" and read the inscription dated four years ago. It says, "To Tess, Stop getting rich with the business and start writing again. Rob." I never got to tell him that after a six year dry spell, I finally did.

Form and Function

It’s official! The new library is finished and back up on the town square instead of operating out of an old DIY store as it has for the past two years. Today is Opening Day, but lucky me, I’ve already had a good look, thanks to a red and black invitation which summoned Eric and me to a special, guests only, sneak peak Thursday night. I was insanely excited to go and had been for weeks, but by the time the witching hour rolled around I felt as much relief as I did anticipation. A week ago today disaster struck the library.

We were blissfully unaware of it until Monday morning when Eric brought in the local paper. I was down the basement, as I am every morning from five a.m. to seven-thirty, wrapping books and listening to the radio. I love this time of day -- there’s just me, the orders, the credit card machine, the bubble wrap and the radio. I wrap, think, sing, dance a little and generally enjoy the solitude. It’s rare to have it interrupted, so when Eric hollered for me to come up I took the stairs at breakneck speed

Silently he held up the paper. The headline screamed “Sprinkler Floods Library.” One look and the wail of anguish was proportional to the destruction of the great Library of Alexandria. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! Say it isn't true!

But it WAS true. A frozen sprinkler in the attic thawed and spontaneously let loose in the adult fiction section drenching the floor with four inches of standing water. Dedicated staffers showed up Saturday night and worked into the wee hours of Sunday morning to save what books they could. A trailer was quickly dispatched from a moving company and the books piled onto it to be taken away and freeze dried. Of course some were lost, but the vast majority may well be saved. And best of all, the Grand Opening would still take place. It was okay, it would be okay. But the potential loss still unnerved me.

The night of the sneak preview it poured rain, but I dressed up as the occasion warranted in understated black topped off with the drop-dead vintage Hattie Carnegie gold choker I got for Christmas. Inside it was a gathering of the tribal leaders -- a party with books. But I barely noticed even the people I knew. I am not even going to try to describe the building. Just think contemporary chic without the hard edges. Just think dazzling.

I couldn’t help but compare it to my first visit there back in the early 70’s. Newly married and fresh from the big city, I was totally underwhelmed. But over the years it got better and better -- so much better that the ALA deemed it best in the nation a few years back. And now it is housed in an architectural wonder that far surpasses the new replacement library in my home town. (Think cell block. Think ugly.) As I stood there ruminating on that I recalled a conversation I had not long ago with an educated woman who actually said to me, “I think libraries are an anachronism. Who needs them? You can get on amazon.com and order anything you want.”

Yes, you can. Those of us who are fortunate enough to indulge can indeed do that. But not everyone has the discretionary income to order up books like Happy Meals. Libraries are a democracy, the one true equalizer sharing their wonders with everyone for the price of a small card. We need libraries. We need to see before our own eyes the depth and breadth of our culture. No, of course not everything humankind has produced is there -- there’s a decided shortage of papyri and incunabula -- but what is there is not chosen by vast corporations who have reduced what we read to the mechanics of “turning product.” At the library the small gems still glitter quietly and those who mine them are instant millionaires.

I need the library. I need to be in the presence of books that are not for sale. I need to see the old men reading magazines, the children scampering about with such unbridled glee they sometimes forget to use their inside voices. I need to see the retired teachers loading up on mystery novels, the teenagers gathered around library tables doing homework (well, a little homework) and the business people tapping away on computers. I need to return again and again to the place that nurtured my spirit when I was a small, unhappy child. I need the library to remind me who I was and who I have become because of it.

An anachronism? Hardly. In fact, I’ll be going back today. The sneak peak was all about form. Today is about function.

"My Darling Ellie ..."

One of the most magical things about being in the book trade is how frequently a special book or piece of ephemera will gravitate to its perfect home. Perhaps none has done that so spectacularly as something I got last year -- some would say “by accident.” However, I think it was meant to come to me, so I could be the conduit to its new and perfect home. If I hadn’t already known this, I would soon have learned it, as tangible proof arrived in the mail at Christmas -- a gift so amazing I had to share it, as well as its bittersweet story.

It all began last winter when I bought a box of turn-of-the-century Delineator magazines at an auction. I knew there were five or six in the box, but what I did not know was that underneath lay a small trove of ephemera consisting of a few letters, a utility bill receipt, a membership card for the Rosicrucians, a packet of old negatives from a pharmacy out west and a beautiful luggage label from a hotel in India. Delighted at my unexpected good fortune, I immediately set the magazines aside and sat on the floor to savor it all, beginning with the letters. As most booksellers who deal in ephemera will attest, most found letters are not keepers. While I personally enjoy reading about getting in the crops and the improvement of Grandma’s influenza, most people aren’t nearly so charmed.

But these letters were special -- I could feel it. They were addressed to a woman aboard a Japanese liner in the Pacific Ocean. The writer was from a college in India and the date was 1933. Carefully, I opened the first envelope and extracted a single sheet of thin paper written on both sides in flowing, if hard to read, script.

“My darling Ellie …”

Words as melodic as a waterfall tumbled from the pen of a poet. By the time I finished the last one, my spirit was in Ghandi’s India, overcome with sadness for these two star crossed lovers who could not possibly have remained together. The writer was Indian, the object of his affection an American. Sadly, the stub from the utility bill confirmed what I already knew. Thirty years later the woman was still Miss Ellie -----. Held up to the light, the negatives showed a woman in western clothing of the 30’s surrounded by the architecture and saris of India. There was no sign of an Indian lover, but how could there be? Such a thing was unthinkable then. An interracial love affair must be secret, a treasure in one’s pocket.

For several weeks I vacillated on what to do with the letters and the rest of the items, but finally decided to list them for sale. Almost immediately they sold to a long time customer from New Mexico, a geneaologist, who saw them initially as an interesting project. Right away she began digging into Ellie’s past and every so often would report back to me with her findings. Ellie was a Midwesterner, a teacher. She lived out of state all of her adult life, but was buried in the Midwest. A little tidbit here, a scrap there, but it wasn’t until April that Cindy called with the big news.

“Tess, the letters are not from a man. They’re from a woman. This was a lesbian affair. I’m positive of it.”

At first I was surprised, but almost immediately I knew she was right. “Yeah, makes sense. “ I said. “Remember that part about 'I wish I could have cooked for you?' No Indian guy in the 30’s is going to say something like THAT!” We laughed and quickly adjusted to this new dynamic.

What an intrepid woman Ellie must have to have been to ventured on such a journey alone and then to have formed such a dangerous liaison. Not only was it against the rules of the day to cross racial and religious lines, but to cross the gender line as well was potentially explosive. After this discovery, however, Cindy seemed to hit a dead end as nothing more was reported, though we did from time to time ruminate on "our girls" and wonder how it had ended and whether hearts had been broken. We hoped they hadn't, but felt sure they had.

Then in December a manila envelope arrived in the mail from New Mexico. I opened it and extracted a clear plastic sleeve. On the top was a photo of a temple, clearly in India. My heart raced. Immediately I knew what this was. Cindy had had the packet of negatives developed and sent me a few copies for Christmas! There were three pictures in all. The second showed a tall, strangely compelling woman in a sari. I knew at once it was her, the poet with the astonishing command of language. For a moment I studied her face. She was not pretty in the traditional sense, but a quiet strength, an inner light, so radiated from her that my first response was to whisper, “Oh, look at you! You’re beautiful!” I could certainly see why Ellie had been drawn to her. What I was not prepared for, however, was Ellie herself.

Ellie proved to be a short, dumpy woman in a polka dot dress wearing a straw hat from which dangled a clump of artificial cherries. She was seated on the ground next to the extraordinary woman in the sari enjoying a picnic for two. There was no question about the relationship. Had we not known before, we’d have known then by the way the woman in the sari regarded her, her hand laid so lovingly on Ellie’s arm and Ellie’s obvious discomfort. In one of the letters mention had been made of Ellie’s fear of discovery and here it was --captured by the camera in black and white. How different these two were, I thought, and yet who is to say what draws two people together? The woman in the sari would not be one to be taken in by surface beauty - that much is clear --so Ellie, too, must have been a woman of substance.

Of course we still don’t know how it ended and probably never will. All we know is that a few scraps from the past revealed a seventy-five year old secret which Cindy and I both feel morally bound to keep. For this reason I have changed Ellie's name and obscured the face in the photo. It was our privilege to share it, but the secret belongs to Ellie and her lover. It is, and will always be, their treasure in the pocket.

Cooking Up A Coincidence?

Anyone who has read this blog with even a passing interest (though I suppose thanks to my long absences nobody qualifies), I am enchanted by serendipity. Today was one of those delightful days when paths cross, stars line up, and thoughts are given a strange nudge from an Unseen Elbow.

On December 27th I listed a very nice copy of a limited edition, self-published book that struck me as rather unique -- Bake Slow and Sure; Heirloom Recipes from the National Road Era. Though there was neither a commercial, nor an academic, publisher to lend credence, a quick perusal proved that it was mercifully not one of those embarrassingly awful books that only the author’s friends will buy (and then only under duress), but a credible piece of workmanship. Actually it’s sort of two books in one -- a biography/history of Jane Skiles Byers and her husband, John White Byers, the author's great-great grandparents, who handed down the generations a very old cookbook, and also a cookbook itself filled with recipes from the National Road Era of 1818-1851. It was in new condition and signed by the author at the Fort Pitt Museum in 2003.

Late this morning the phone rang and who was on the other end of the line but the author himself, Frank La Cava. All 2000 copies have been sold, he told me, and though he may get around to reprinting it, right now he’s too busy writing a second book. We chatted for awhile and I found him a most learned historian and altogether guileless and charming in his delight in authorship and its resultant benefit of “being fussed over.” I wasn’t entirely sure why he called, but it didn’t matter -- it was a lovely interlude.

We hung up and I went back to the task of listing books. Almost immediately the bell on the computer dinged and I checked my email to find an order on my own website for Bake Slow and Sure. At first I thought Frank had ordered a copy himself, as I regularly sell authors their own first editions. But no. This copy was ordered by a woman in Pennsylvania to be shipped to a man in Albequerque. How weird is THAT, I thought to myself as I wrote her a note asking if it was a gift and if she would like me to gift wrap it and enclose a card with her message. Almost immediately she phoned. Yes, please, she would like it wrapped for her twin brother’s birthday.

“Both my brother and I love to cook,” she confided. “I hadn’t a clue what to buy him and so I was just fooling around on Google and it led me to you and this book. We were talking at Thanksgiving and I told him that I have our mother’s cookbook and he was anxious to make some of the recipes we ate when we were kids. There’s something about food from the past, the way it looks and smells and tastes that makes you remember. It brings up so many stories.”

This was getting downright eerie. Back in the late 90’s I wrote a book about storytelling that Reader’s Digest actually excerpted. A few weeks ago I was interviewed by a local newspaper about storytelling and the elderly. I didn’t want to do it, but the reporter was an old friend, and I couldn’t say no. To my amazement it was as if no time had passed at all since I wrote the book. I found myself talking with such passion and interest I felt like I'd been plugged into the wall socket. Later I thought maybe it was one topic I could actually revisit. As the days went by the idea kept popping back up. First I thought I’d try to resell an updated version of the original manuscript. It is, after all, the sole book with my name on it that I don’t despise -- too much. But the more I thought about it the more I wanted to explore the relationship between cooking and storytelling, as well as the idea of food as story.

And now here was this woman stating my theme to me! Amazing. Absolutely amazing how a book I never heard of led a guy in Pennsylvania to call up to chat with me about history and cooking and a woman in Pennsylvania to order the same obscure book she’d never heard of just moments later to send to a man in Albequerque, which led me to ask if was a gift, which then prompted her to expound on cooking and storytelling! Coincidence? Nope. Not a chance. The Unseen Elbow strikes again!

Thanks for the Memories

New Year’s makes me nervous. I know rationally that time is a continuum and any effort on our part to slice and dice it is essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of the cosmos. But there is something about ushering out the “old year” and welcoming in the new that always seems risky to me. It’s like sticking our thumbs in our ears, wagging our fingers and chanting “Nah, nah-nah, nah, nah!” as we dance around the Fates. Much better I think to lay low and make a nice pork roast.

Yet I am surprisingly content this New Year’s Day, 2008. Even my husband commented on it. “Wow, ” he said watching as I ran the vacuum cleaner across the family room rug with a flourish. “You love everything today.”

Yes, I do love everything today. Well, maybe not everything. I can name any number of goings-on in Washington and the Middle East that fill me with despair. I also don’t love that I forgot to turn the oven on to cook the nice pork roast, so the latter is moldering in the trash as we speak. But at least at this moment of this day, in this office, in this house, there is contentment and even a sense of opti …

STOP! Scratch the optimism. My essentially melancholy Irish nature struggles mightily with optimism. Let’s just say there’s hope and leave it at that.

It occurs to me that perhaps what matters more than optimism anyway is gratitude. By tomorrow I’ll be bitching about lowball offers on e-bay, bad TV and the fact that the library hasn’t reopened from the move to it’s new and improved digs uptown. But right now I’m here. We are here. And we have -- I have -- much to be thankful for. Not only am I blessed with a patient husband, great kids, amusing and faithful friends, and a little boy who calls me Gran, but sales at Garrison House Books were up considerably last year. And even after ten years in this wacky, constantly evolving business I still wake up happy and excited to be a bookseller.

I just hope the darn pork roast doesn’t jinx it.

For The Birds!

If the picture to the left seems dull as dishwater, that’s precisely the point. This is a story about a little blue booklet so drab if it were a debutante its dance card would be revoked. I bought it last week, sold it this week, and will still be talking about it when I get to bookseller’s heaven where, thanks to said little blue booklet, there’s a luxurious white cloud waiting with my name on it.

It all began last week when I spotted the homely little thing at my favorite book sale of the year. I looked at it, put it back, picked it up, set it down again. Finally, on my second pass through the tables I bought it on the half chance that with the new interest in “going green” someone might actually want to learn how to turn a golf course into a bird sanctuary. The booklet was published by the Audubon Society in the thirties and was called Golf Clubs As Bird Sanctuaries. It was liberally illustrated with black and white photos, mostly of birds nesting in trees scattered around golf courses, or “golf clubs” as they were called then. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure the oddly worded title caught my fancy as much as anything. I distinctly remember a hazy mental image of baby bird beaks gaping hungrily out of the top of a leather bag full of golf clubs. There may have been some of those funky knitted cozies on top of the clubs too, but I can't swear to that.

Anyway, the booklet surfaced in a box late Thursday afternoon so I duly listed it online. Pricing was a bit of a problem, as, oddly, there were no comparables. But I looked it over pretty well and could see nothing other than its apparent, and probably temporary, scarcity to recommend it. So I listed it at a pie-in-the-sky $25 and went cheerfully off to watch the Cleveland Cavaliers lose to the Spurs in game one of the finals. By the time the slaughter was over the little blue booklet had sold on ABE to a guy in England. I tried deleting it from my other venues, but it hadn’t indexed yet, so I went to bed. By morning it had sold again on Biblio, this time to an American. As I was sending regrets to Buyer Two it occurred to me that with so much interest so fast I’d probably under-priced it. “Should have asked fifty,” I muttered, hitting the Send button.

Immediately Buyer Two fired back a note. If I hadn’t already shipped it, he would like to offer me $300 for it. I cleaned my reading glasses to make sure I’d read that right, and thought about Eric’s teeth and the $800 dental bill (after insurance) that had arrived the previous day. I admit it. For a nanosecond I wavered, but in the end declined so I could live with myself in relative peace. I did, however, ask him why anyone would pay so much for such an ugly (ha-ha) duckling.

Right away he shot me a second email explaining that the great golfer Bobby Jones was on the Board when they published it. Since I wouldn’t know a putter from a pickaxe, the name meant nothing to me, but I checked the booklet and, sure enough, there was a Robert Jones listed among the Board members. Quickly, I googled Bobby Jones and learned that he’d won the first Grand Slam in 1930.

“I’ll give you $400,” Buyer Two concluded.

Gulp.

Again, I thought of Eric’s teeth and the $800 dental bill and wavered a second time. But in the end I stuck fast to the original no. No, I couldn’t live with myself if I did it. No, it wouldn’t be right. No it goes against my vision of who I am and what I’m about. No, I couldn’t possibly. No, no, no …

Now here it is twenty-four hours later and I am filled with regret. No, not for the string of emphatic nos. The money would have been great, but the karma wouldn’t, so that one was a no-brainer. What I regret is the failure of it all. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s failure and this time the self-appointed Queen of Research failed big. Of course it’s not like Bobby Jones had signed the thing and I’d missed the signature. And Robert Jones is a very common name, so even if Bobby and I had been buddies in a former life why would I recognize his name when it was printed formally on a brochure about birds? I tried out all the rationalizations I could think of, but in the end I felt pretty stupid. And still do.

It didn’t help that while I was writing this, Buyer THREE called on the phone from London to rub salt in my wounds. I am not making this up either. I swear on a stack of Golf Clubs As Bird Sanctuaries that he really did call right in the middle of the explanation about Bobby Jones. He’d seen the listing on ChooseBooks yesterday and printed it out, but when he went back to order it it was gone. So he figured he’d “ring up” and see if I still had it.

Regretfully, I don’t. I shipped it to Lancashire this morning. All I can say is, that lofty perch in bookseller heaven better be a Sterns & Foster. I deserve the Cadillac of clouds for this one.

Small Marvels

Sunday Morning Joe suggested last week that I ought to write a post based on a particularly gratifying conversation we conducted in the wee hours of a Sunday morning past. I think it was back in January sometime -- maybe even Super Bowl Weekend, though why I would ever remember Super Bowl Weekend as football challenged as I am, I have no idea. I also have no idea how it it was that we got to talking about small pleasures in the first place, but it sure was a small pleasure doing it.

Some things we agreed on right up front -- reading, the changing of the seasons, homemade soup (though he goes for split pea and I go for anything that's NOT split pea), the first sip of morning coffee ( small disconnect here too, as he for some strange, unknown reason likes Taster's Choice crystals and I prefer Folger's dark gourmet. fresh brewed )-- but other things were our own unique delights. Take bubble baths, for instance. Is there anything so gratifying as a good book ands a scorching hot bath scented with mango? Ohmygod, I could stay in there until I turned into a prune, or the hot water ran out, which ever came last. Then there's black licorice. I know most people like the fake red stuff, but when it comes to licorice I'm such a purist I could be on the Food Channel expouding on its piquant qualities. Yes, I could be the Rachel Ray of licorice! One of the best Christmas presents I ever got was back in the 70's when Eric and I had only been married a couple years. He gave me this huge box filled with 23 paperback novels by my then-favorite author and about ten bags of black licorice in various forms. I couldn't have asked for another thing-- which is not to say that the occasional bottle of Oscar de la Renta, which said husband presented me with this past Valentine's Day (he calls it Oscar's Daily Rent), isn't likewise appreciated.

Anyway, the point is that ever since that conversation with Sunday Morning Joe I seem to keep adding small delights to my mental list. Fresh sheets on the bed, Tyler's little voice on the phone saying "Hi Gran," popcorn and movies, the view out the kitchen window, Sunday walks with Nancy, Saturday morning talks with Jessica, making a great find at a book sale, a clean house (best if I wasn't the cleaner), a new issue of the New Yorker in the mail, the company of cats, a looooooooong email from Lisa, the writer's group sitting around my dining room table, daffodils, lilacs, Motown, dancing, Irish music, my kids, lipstick, skinny jeans, being skinny enough to wear skinny jeans, Pino Grigio, champagne, sharing ebay stories with my niece Liza, Christmas trees, white twinkle lights, fireworks, Ode to Joy, small town parades, porches, grocery shopping, penny candy, pajamas, altered books, bookstores, walking on the beach, a sky full of stars, fireflies, the sound of croaking frogs at night, good neighbors like Linda next door, talking in line at book sales, PT Cruisers, getting up early, the Gilmore Girls, ephemera, the morning paper, Sunday Morning Joe ...

I could go on and on, but one thing's for sure. No matter how much there is to complain about -- and God knows I complain more than I ought to --the world is filled with marvels. And the best part is they're right there all the time and lots of them cost little to nothing. The secret is to recognize a marvel when you see one and don't wait until things get better to appreciate it. I think I've always known this, but it's taken me fifty-five years on the planet to make a point of fnding them every single day. I highly recommend it.

The Zen of Bookselling

When I began as a bookseller ten years ago this April it never occurred to me that bookselling was a free lunch. Go to a library sale, load up, and – presto! chango! – money cascading into your account. The crazy part is that the money did sort of cascade in those early halcyon days of internet selling. But even so, I knew that if I wanted to turn my lifelong love affair with books into a successful, dignified, and meaningful business I needed to knuckle down and learn a few things. So, autodidact that I am, I opted for baptism by total immersion. I read countless books about books, experimented with packaging materials, learned how to keep careful records, transferred the customer service skills I had attained in my former job as PR director for a nursing home complex into my new endeavor, and polished my writing skills to offer detailed descriptions of my wares. To do any less seemed to me to trivialize a time honored profession -- witht he operative word being profession.

All that was great and has served me well, but there was a missing component which, strangely enough, I just “got” very recently. The cosmic joke is that it was taught to me by the very people to whom I had developed a natural antipathy – the new breed of booksellers who, along with their corporate counterparts, have discovered that used, out-of-print, and rare books are Big Business. For years now I have ranted over their rudeness at sales as they shoved past me -- and into me -- to grab as many fetching little moneymakers as they could, rolled my eyes when they made such inane statements as, “You don’t gotta know nothin’ to sell books,” and seethed at the eternal beeping of the scanning devices which allow them to check the going rate for books on the Big River (a.ka. Amzon.com) via ISBN number.

“There sure was a lot of communing with the great god amazon today,” I’d tell my husband after a sale. We’d laugh, but inside I was becoming less and less amused.

Meanwhile as the hobby sellers reproduced like one-celled microorganisms the corporate entities became greedier and ever more paternalistic in their dealings with sellers. Little by little the original joy I had found in bookselling began slipping away. It’s not that I didn’t love my work. Nothing could take away the deep satisfaction of the books themselves, the exhilarating interaction with the customers, even the pleasure of such mundane tasks as cleaning and wrapping. But my attitude was nonetheless becoming as sour as an old pickle.

So how did I finally “get it”? And what is it that I finally got? The answer to the first question is I don’t know. There were no thunderbolts, no one big defining moment. It just happened and as quietly as if on Carl Sandburg’s “little cat feet.” I may not know the how, but I sure know the what and that is simply this – my anger at the sellers and the corporations stemmed from a primal fear that they would snatch away this thing that meant so much to me. The truth is, of course, that you can’t run a business, or a life, based on fear. I’m not big on religion, but I’m all over faith -- faith in a limitless Universe and a benign Creator with a sense of humor and a heart the size of Her creation. I had just failed to understand that faith and intention are as much a part of bookselling as knowledge. What the penny sellers and the scanners do has nothing to do with me. My intention is what it always has been -- to run a dignified, meaningful business, to serve my customers well and to enjoy doing it. And it's working! Watching other sellers scurrying around like ants tossing books helter-skelter into boxes has made me realize exactly what I DON'T want and, most importantly, exactly what I do.

So then. Railing at external forces is a monumental waste of energy, not to mention damaging to the soul. Far better to simply live in the Light, walk my own path, and follow the river -- just not the one with the dot com extension.

Dinner With My Mother

It’s six-thirty in the morning and I am alone in my office staring at my mother’s photo in her online obituary. She’s all dolled up in a pretty dress with perfectly coiffed hair, nice glasses and jewelry. Her smile is wide, sweet even, but I feel no sense of recognition. Who is this old lady masquerading as my mother? And what did they do with the real one?

My mother left us six years ago when my father had to be admitted to a nursing home. I begged her not to, but she went anyway because living with her sister was preferable to taking her chances with her daughters. Her fear that we might put her in a nursing home trumped any desire to see us again. The loss of us – my sister and me, my two daughters, and the great grandchild she never knew – was a price I guess she was willing to pay. I’ve often wondered whether it was worth it and truly hope it was because, frankly, it would have given me sticker shock

I knew when she left I’d never see her again and that’s just about the way it worked out. My aunt is an all or nothing, black or white, love them or hate them sort of woman. With her there are no gradations and certainly no mercy. She took our mother away, slammed the door behind her, and left us with our father until he died three years later. In my mother’s family the tradition is to fight like hell with your relatives until they die and then canonize them the day after. I refuse to carry it on. The bold, flat, honest-to-God truth is my mother was a holy terror when we were children, controlling and hard to get along with when we were adults, and absolutely delightful just before she left, thanks to a strange, unnamed psychosis.

During that period she screamed at imaginary people out the side door. Saw Clark Gable in the trees beyond the living room picture window. Giggled like a school girl to think he was making eyes at her. Cowered at the sight of imaginary bugs crawling out of the ceiling. And clawed at her arms to scratch their imaginary bites. But for the first time in her life she seemed to actually like me. I’d bring her dinner at night – scalloped potatoes and ham, chicken and noodles, mac and cheese, comfort foods that made her clap her hands with delight.

“Here she comes!” she’d crow as I came through the side door laden down with casseroles and salads. “We’ll have fun now!”

Once when I was sitting with her while she ate, she laid down her fork, looked at me intently, and said, “You’re so pretty.” I think the thought had never occurred to her before.

When I’d help her to bed she’d apologize for being so much trouble. And sometimes she’d show me her little stuffed dog and tell me what he’d had to say to her that day. My mother was charmed with me and I with her. Of course I knew it was some chemical imbalance in the brain, some hardwiring run amok. But I like to think that maybe by falling down the rabbit hole of mental illness she had a tea party with the little girl she must have been once upon a time

I’ll never know though because she left soon after and almost immediately I became embroiled in a legal battle with my aunt to make sure my father’s rights were protected. When I prevailed she had my mother sign a paper which legally separated her from her husband of 51 years. I never saw either woman again until three years later when they came to my father’s funeral. By then the psychosis was gone, or the right combination of drugs had finally been achieved. Either way, any charm I’d developed in her eyes seemed to have leeched away. She talked pleasantly enough to my sister and me, but clearly wasn’t too interested in either of us. And so, that was that.

Now its three years later and we found out that she died on Monday, New Year’s Day. The obituary doesn’t say where, or of what ailment. It does say she had two daughers, but it doesn’t list our names. And it never mentions that she was grandmother to my two daughters and great-grandmother to our beloved Tyler. Though my mother would never have won the Grandmother of the Year Award, in her way she liked my children and would never have excluded them. She could be mean, but she was not calculating. She didn’t plan to hurt people, she just did it. Not so her sister. But it doesn't really matter anymore, as we won’t be going to the funeral. I will close the screen on the offending obituary and remember my mother in my own way. Maybe I’ll make her some macaroni and cheese.

Heaven's Suggestion

Back when I was a struggling writer I used to harbor this Christmas fantasy so embarrassing I blush to think of it. I was reminded of it this year when the doorbell suddenly rang in the midst of my annual writer’s group Christmas party.

“Maybe that’s it!” Nancy shouted, waving her wineglass. “Your Christmas fantasy come true.”

“Ha-ha,” I replied. “As if.”

In order for a publisher to be sending me a big, fat Christmas contract I would first have to have written a big, fat new book -- which we all know I have not. Turns out it was just UPS working late into the night to drop off the DVDs I’d ordered from overstock.com. But the unexpected intrusion got me to thinking about old dreams and Christmas miracles and what it would be like if they really did come true. I knew it was silly, childish even, but part of me longed for a Christmas miracle. The publishing thing was out, of course, and I had no notion of what might replace it, but my heart was definitely open to heaven’s suggestion. So it was in that frame of mind that I answered the phone a few days later.

“Can you help me find a book?” a sweet elderly female voice asked.

“I’d be happy to try,” I replied. “What the title?”

“Well, that’s just it. I don’t know.”

“Do you know who wrote it?”

“No. All I know is that my sister and I read it in the 30’s and it changed our lives. We still talk about it to this day. I want to get it for her for either Christmas, or her birthday on January 4th. She’ll be 82.”

“Hmmm, that might be a little tricky,” I said. “But think hard. What can you remember about it?

"Oh, I remember a lot. It was dark, the cover I mean, and I think it might have been set in a little brown house. But then again maybe it was published by Little Brown.”

At this point many booksellers would have rolled their eyes and suddenly realized they had a call waiting on the other line. But when Greta laughed at the absurdity of what she’d just said, I knew she was my kind of girl. For better or for worse, I’d been tapped to be her book finder. For the better part of half an hour we laughed and talked and finally nailed down a few concrete details. The story was about five sisters whose names were Faith, Hope, Charity, Peace and something that didn’t fit. They baked cakes and Peace, the youngest, was a hell raiser of the first order. Armed with these details, I was ready to sally forth into the valley of vintage children’s books.

Trouble is, neither Google, Yahoo, nor all the king’s men or all the king’s horses cooperated. I tried so many things I can’t even remember the sequence of events, but it concluded with a plea on booksleuth at abebooks.com where I hoped and prayed that someone would recognize the sketchy plotline. Almost right away the suggestions poured in, but it didn’t take long to realize that none of them were right.

“You tried,” my husband consoled me. “Now give it up. It’s nearly impossible with so little information.”

Of course it wasn’t impossible! And anyway, impossible or not, I was Greta’s book finder, not her book looker. Finally on the afternoon of December 20th I went back to booksleuth on the half chance that someone else had logged on. And there it was – At The Little Brown House by Ruth Alberta Brown.

“That can’t be right,” I muttered. The first day she called I’d asked Greta about that very book which I’d sold last year and she’d assured me it didn’t ring any bells. But the guy on booksleuth was almost certain that was it.

Quickly, I did a search and found two copies on the net. I emailed both dealers with my sketchy info and one wrote back immediately. Faith, Hope and Peace were all present, and accounted for, as was someone named Gail. There was even a part about cakes, but there was no reference she could see to Charity. It took several calls to local librarians and a copy speedily sent through interlibrary loan from the Burton, Ohio library to confirm it. I'd done it -- I'd actually found Greta's book. Charity was in there after all. It’s just that she goes by the name Cherry.

That night I ordered it, nearly bursting with the excitement of being part of a Christmas miracle. Actually, I ordered both of the copies I’d found, one for her sister and one for Greta. The bill for the first book came to $25. The second one was paid in full with one stipulation. Even before she knew that I used to write professionally, Greta told me that all her life she’d wanted to be a writer. For a short while straight out of high school she’d covered the military desk for the old Cleveland Post and written stories about local boys serving in WWII. But then life took several unexpected turns. She became a wife, a mother of five, a widow much too soon, and a baker of fabulous cakes and never wrote again. Lately she’s been thinking about maybe writing down a few stories for posterity, but so far hasn’t picked up a pen. She never went to college, she explained, and it had been too long since she’d tried composing anything. So there’s where the stipulation comes in. The price of the second book, I told her, is the promise that she’ll forget time and the lack of a degree and start writing again.

When I began this blog I thought that finding Greta’s book was my Christmas miracle, but now I see I that I got it all wrong. The book was just a conduit to bring together two people who share the same old dream and needed the same exact thing. The real miracle was that in giving each other the gift of belief we found it in ourselves -- if only for a little while.

Sundays with Joe

As always, I find myself fascinated by how life’s seemingly inconsequential threads silently weave themselves together to bestow a sense of meaning to those willing to seek it. While I was writing about my love for the movie 84 Charing Cross Road and bemoaning my neurotic perfectionism, a new piece of cloth was being woven in the background. It’s a bright, crazy explosion of color– orange and purple I think – one of those open weave sort of things where the threads run downhill and end up with a crooked fringe on all four sides. Every time I think about it it makes me laugh, primarily because it’s bright enough to send distress signals to the moon yet I only now realized it for what it is.

What it is is this – an unexpected blessing and proof positive that God has a sense of humor. The British bookseller on Charing Cross Road had his eccentric customer, Helen Hanff, and Mitch Albom had his Tuesdays With Morrie, but neither one of them had anything on me. Lucky me, I’m a bookseller who has Sundays With Joe.

Joe is a customer who came into my life via Alibris, which is joke in itself since at the time Alibris was the one online book service that worked the hardest to keep the gap between customer and bookseller wider than the Mississippi River after a monsoon. But none of their technological tomfoolery stopped Joe -- he plowed right in and found me anyhow. The big question is why he hung around. I mean all I ever did was sell him a book -- a nice book and wrapped rather prettily too -- but, even so, it’s hardly enough to make me worthy of my own private brass band. And yet a brass band is what I got. Joe laughs at my jokes, talks me out of the trees when I get hysterical, teaches me things I don’t know, and reassures me that he never says anything bad about me. It doesn’t get much better than that, especially considering the fact that he was building radios back when the only thing I was building involved alphabet blocks.

Currently he’s instructing me in the intricacies of the Fibonacci sequence. Laugh, but this is much harder than it seems, as I am profoundly mathematically challenged, though Joe won’t brook that excuse for a nanosecond.

“Come on Tess, you have to do this! I know it's hard, but the more you look, the easier it gets. Look again! It builds CHARACTER.”

This came after I whined about last week’s lesson which required the transmission of a large color photo of the heart of a flower in which all the tight little yellow seed pod things swirled in two different directions. My assignment was to count the rows of seed pod things going each way. Think it’s easy? Well, think again, as the heart of a flower truly examined not only crosses your eyes, but sends them, boinging ( yes, boinging) out of their sockets. My answer was twelve each way, but I doubt I’m right, and even if I am, I haven’t a clue what it has to do with adding sequential numbers together to arrive at the next number in the sequence. I’m sure I’ll find out come Sunday morning though

Which brings me to the cool part of the story. All this fun stuff is conducted in its near entirety on Sunday mornings, usually before the sun crawls across the horizon. Before most people are even up, much less caffeinated, heavy discussions are being conducted across cyberspace about such things as loons, the game 25 Words Or Less, the benefits of walking, basketball versus football, perfectionism, nuns, movie dialogue and, of course, the Fibonacci sequence.

Why this cloth is being woven in the background of my life I don’t know, but I suspect it’s a spiritual enterprise. (I can already hear Joe laughing at that one, but never mind.) Every Sunday morning my friend Nancy and I walk five miles, an endeavor I know for a fact is a spiritual enterprise. Since this discourse has become its prelude, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the cloth turns into a coat of many colors. It’s already orange and purple and bright enough to send distress signals to the moon. And Joseph, let us not forget, was the guy with the amazing technicolor dreamcoat.

The Moral of the Chicken Juice Shower

Life has strange ways of bringing us to our knees. Sometimes it’s metaphorical and sometimes it’s literal. For me, it was both, which partially explains my silence, since the event occurred exactly two weeks ago today, the day after I wrote my last blog. It was six-thirty a.m. of the morning of my niece Mandy’s wedding shower. The afore-mentioned tarts had been baked and arranged in all their cherry-almond and apple-cranberry splendor on trays in the refrigerator. Their baker, however, was anything but splendid. I was bleary-eyed, vaguely out of sorts from the previous day’s existential angst, and looking like the remains of a gone-to-seed dandelion after a puff of wind. If that seems like an exaggeration just visualize wrinkly aqua p.j.s. and olive green socks.

Anyway, I opened the refrigerator, waved my hand around in the general vicinity of the red plastic container of Folger’s as I do every morning, and wound up plastered against the kitchen island. I’m telling you -- I never saw this one coming. The coffee container hit a bowl of defrosted chicken and sent the whole thing hurtling forward onto the floor, giving both trays of tarts a fly-by chicken juice shower on the way down. I suppose a less neurotic person might have trusted the integrity of plastic wrap, but I had not been PR director of a nursing home for three long years for nothing. I’d seen the Health Department inspector give the Dietary Director a citation for putting her purse on the counter, for Pete’s sake. Never mind squadrons of salmonella flying around inside the Maytag.

So I did the only thing I could -- dropped to my knees, picked up the chicken, scrubbed the devil out of the laminate, dumped the (perfect) tarts down the garbage disposal and began taking everything out of the #$%^&&** refrigerator. That’s right -- I swore a lot, which I have found is the best front line of defense when life brings you to your knees in small, but absolute, ways. The funny thing is, while I was down on the floor screaming like a banshee a couple major thoughts occurred to me. First I wondered whether I had enough ingredients to make more tarts. (No.) Next I wondered what I could make in their place. (Cookies, lemon bars, brownies) And then it occurred to me that I would make absolutely nothing. That’s right – nothing. Zip. Zero. Zilch. NADA. I would go to the bakery as if I were a truly sane person who understands the reason God invented bakeries and buy some tarts.

Once that was decided, it next occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t an accident that the chicken took a joy ride. Maybe it was to show me that I really don’t have to go through life as a neurotic pleaser. (Wow! There’s a novel thought!) And maybe -- just maybe -- my whole problem with not writing anymore has something to do with being a neurotic, perfectionistic pleaser. And maybe since I'm writing a blog it means that I'm technically writing anyway. And maybe if I can write a blog then it stands to reason that maybe I can write something else too!

So I went to the bakery, bought the tarts, took them to the shower, told a funny story about it, went home, and started writing something. And that’s why I haven’t written anything here for fourteen days. I’ve been too busy writing what might become a novel. Or not. But it doesn't matter whether it does, or it doesn't, because A.) I'm writing again and B) (this is the amazing part) I'm having a blast doing it!

Blog Day Afternoon

It’s late afternoon, Saturday, the day I had set aside to transform myself from bookseller into domestic diva. It started out well enough – did the laundry, changed the bed linen, emptied the dishwasher and made a double batch of tarts for my niece’s wedding shower tomorrow. But no sooner were the “have-tos” done than the Martha Stewart in me took off her apron and headed south. I’m in a decidedly melancholy mood today, brought on by two phone calls and a couple odd things I’ve been thinking about all week.

First, the odd things. I was reading John Allen’s book, Opus Dei, which is about the secret Catholic organization Dan Brown made famous in The Da Vinci Code. To be honest, I thought Allen would serve it up on a gold-plated paten with a side of pap, as he has ties to both the Catholic press and the Vatican, but I was wrong. It’s a pretty even-handed account, which in summation, seems to insinuate that while Opus Dei isn't as heinous as you might think, it's not exactly the local Kiwanis Club either. Of course I may be wrong about that, as my "recovering Catholic" sensibilities recoiled somewhere around page 153 and I never finished the book. I thought about it some, but it frankly it gave me the creeps, so I tossed it into the primeval stew of my subconscious and thought instead about how tortunous it is for me to not finish a book once I start reading it. This led to a memory of the summer I was ten and tried to read every book in the library, but never got past the first shelf of A’s because every time I went back there were always new A’s.

For the rest of the week though every time I passed Opus Dei lying on a table in the family room it caught my eye. First I’d think about the creepiness, then I’d feel a stab of guilt for not finishing it. Then, invariably, I’d remember how ten year old me actually thought she could read herself around the children’s room of the library and a wave of sadness would lap at my feet.

Then this morning Jessica called and somehow we got to talking about my family of origin. We like to rehash stuff we already know, Jessica and I, just in case there might be a nuance we hadn’t chewed over in the last 25 years. There didn’t appear to be, but I still hung up feeling sort of off-kilter. A couple hours later, while I was making the tarts, Laurie called to see how our friend Nancy is recovering from the complications of a hysterectomy. Since the news is good on that front, we wandered off onto a bunch of other topics and finally settled in on me not writing anymore, which led Laurie, whom you may recall is a fellow writer, to launch into a passionate speech about why I need to start.

I wish I could recall exactly what she said because it was really good. I know this because her impassioned speeches about writing are always good. It's just that this time I got sidetracked by the fact that though none of her words implied any of these things, every single one contained in its nucleus Catholicism, guilt, and the innocence of my ten year-old self yearning to read every book in the library.

Pass the primeval stew, please, and hand me a big spoon. This may take awhile.

The Cat Who Would Never Make A Book

Not long ago, while I was perusing new fiction at the local library (which is currently being housed in a former DIY store until the massive downtown renovation can be completed), a certain librarian who will go unnamed (Hi, Liz!), filed a complaint with the Blog Department. It seems that this librarian is a secret reader of my blog and wished to lodge her grievance on behalf of Mickey, our former street thug turned Bookcat.

“You never write about the cat,” she accused.

“I do so,” I countered. “There’s even a PICTURE of the cat.”

“Yes, but you never write about the cat. If the name of the blog is Books Art Life And A Cat then it’s only fair that you write about the cat.”

The Blog Department emitted a deep sigh and agreed to write about the cat.

So here I am -- writing about the cat.

Before I begin though, it must first be understood that I am NOT one of those pet owners who takes the cat to get his picture taken with Santa Claus. I do not travel with this cat, nor do I force him to endure the indignity of rhinestone collars. I don’t buy fresh shrimp and albacore tuna for him. I don’t cook his food. I don’t serve him dinner in a crystal bowl and I most emphatically do not coo at him. I talk to him like the cool laid-back guy he is and he greatly appreciates it.

Secondly, it must be understood that even though “they” say that love is blind I’m not buying it. The real deal is that love sees all faults and wades in anyway. So that being said, I harbor no illusions that Mickey’s any smarter, cuter, or more amusing than he actually is. Rest assured that if something were to happen to the ultimate feline sleuth, Koko, Lillian Jackson Braun would not be begging me to let her use Mickey as his stand-in for her next “The Cat Who …” mystery. Koko knocks books off shelves to provide clues to murders. Mick does it because he’s so ungainly he could trip over The Cat In the Hat, never mind War and Peace. Koko escorts unwanted and suspicious guests to the door. Mick, who is incapable of keeping a civil tongue in his head, licks them until they settle back with tea and crumpets. Koko loves to listen to the classics being read aloud. Mick regards the classics as leatherbound mattresses. Koko can read backwards. Mick can’t even read four words.

Bottom line --Mickey is nothing more than a big, loveable goofball who was rescued from the mean streets of suburban Medina and has a few missing teeth to prove it. Which is not to say he isn't a great guy. He is. He keeps a low profile, asks for little, keeps me warm in the winter, makes me laugh, doesn't claw the furniture, understands the purpose of a litter box, plays well with others, and never runs with scissors.

That's it.

Which means that I have now officially written about the cat.

Good "Book Feel"

Every once in awhile a movie comes along that causes me to break Cardinal Rule #1 of Movies -- never watch the same one twice or you’ll never live long enough to see everything you want to. I broke that rule this week and may even break it a bunch more times once I buy my own copy. Of course, such a purchase will be breaking Cardinal Rule #2 of Movies – never, EVER buy the movie, as movies take up space and have to watched in order to justify their existence, which therefore automatically runs amok of Cardinal Rule #1. But I don’t care. I made the stupid rules and I can break them if I want to.

So what’s this great movie causing so much flagrant rule breaking? 84 Charing Cross Road. It’s an oldie based on the book of the same title by Helen Hanff. I’d read it some years back, and though enchanted by the 20 year correspondence between the author in New York City and a British bookseller in London, I was more taken with the situation than the actual letters. But that was before Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins transmitted themselves into both my family room and my heart -- he so genteely and she so NOT. I laughed, I cried, I even clasped my hands like a Victorian lady having a case of the vapors. The latter occurred at the part where Ann rhapsodizes over the joys of a used book – how wonderful it is to have it fall open to the page where the last reader left off, how delightful to be informed by notes, or marks, of the significance of passages you might have skimmed over left to your own uneducated devices, even how a gift inscription is not a flaw, but a part of the book’s unique history.

But what really had me in need of smelling salts was the part where the first parcel of books arrives from across the pond. Anne crashes up the stairs of her walk-up and, once inside the door, falls on the package like a ravenous dog on an untended beef roast. As soon as the first book is released from its packet (which itself is fetchingly tied with string) she’s a goner. Just the feel of it, so much more sensual than its plebian modern counterparts, which to this day tend to be paper over boards with paper jackets, sends her into a swoon of ecstasy.

Right then and there I knew this was the movie for me. It had it all – humor, pathos, intrigue, a touch of romance, and good book feel. Name one other movie with good book feel. You can't. So, Cardinal Rules be damned, I have to buy – I just bought –84 Charing Cross Road.

The Deer Stalker

I’ve mentioned before how, for some inexplicable reason, something seemingly innocuous will happen, and I’ll hang on to it like it was my last dime. Well, it happened again and it’s partly why I haven’t written anything new lately. I’ve been trying to figure out why in the world a deer, albeit a gorgeous one, has become my latest mind stalker.

It all began last week when my writer’s group met, as they often do, at my house. I was tidying up a bit before their arrival when I looked out the expanse of bay window in the living room and nearly cut an antique table off at the knees with the Hoover. There, not six feet from the glass, stood a magnificent deer sheltered in a stand of trees. It’s not that we haven’t seen deer in the suburbs before – they flit by on a regular basis these days. What they do NOT do, however, is stand at attention in front of an open window in broad daylight staring at me eyeball to eyeball while the vacuum cleaner’s roaring like a race car engine! Once I got over the surprise I managed to finish cleaning and dash upstairs for a quick shower. At first I hated to run the water for fear of scaring off my visitor, but it didn’t prove to be a problem. In fact, afterwards I even decided to say something to her (never mind what) out the bathroom window. All it elicited was a minimal twitching of the ears.

By the time the writers showed up a full hour had passed and all that had changed is that the deer got tired of standing and had the good sense to sit down. Dandi and Laurie, unlike me, are country girls, so you’d think they’d see this sort of thing all the time, but I guess not, as they were over-the-moon enchanted at the sight. I thought the deer exuded a feminine presence myself, but Laurie, who is decidedly more interested in body parts than I am, was convinced it was a male. I suspect now she was right, as the whole thing ended up being a one night stand. Every afternoon and early evening since, I’ve looked with great expectancy out that same window only to be disappointed.

As I’ve thought about this odd event all week it brought back another event I’d almost forgotten. Some years ago when I wrote a lot for the Akron Beacon Journal Sunday Magazine I was sent on assignment to interview an ex-Dominican nun who purportedly communed with higher beings and was able to conduct conversations with her clients' guardian angels. My friend Jessica, who has always had a yen for psychic dabbling, went along as my assistant. To tell the truth, it was a little disappointing at first. Except for the Egyptian music being played in the background for a cat who was in labor in the laundry room, the angel psychic was about as exotic as a soccer mom. I asked questions, she politely answered. At one point she grabbed a sketchpad and started drawing furiously with colored chalks, but the interview continued seamlessly, so I thought little of it. Wen she finished drawing, she tore off the masterwork, and handed it to me.

I glanced at it and then over at Jessica whose eyebrows by then had shot up to hit her hairline. To the left of the page lay a blue lake, to the right a gazillion trees. A stone path wound through the center bordered by drifts of daffodils. In the foreground a magnificent deer stood at attention gazing straight out at me. Minus the deer, the soccer mom psychic had just whipped off an exact rendering of my backyard!

“Wh-what does this mean?” I asked, a bit disconcerted.

“I don’t know,” came the reply. “It’s yours to figure out.”

And so it was, though I never really did. For a day or so after the interview I tried in a half-hearted sort of way, but then promptly lost the artwork and forgot all about it. Now fifteen years have passed and here I am suddenly thinking about it again. Crazy as it sounds, I have to wonder if the chalk drawing is somehow mystically connected to last week's deer.

I think Carl Jung's been stalking me too.