Chapter 213 Checking In

Hi there! Anyone still reading while I am away on vacation? I am just checking in to say hello and to let you know I am having lots of fun. As you know, I am by no means an outdoors-girl or a camper, but I like traveling in the RV very much so far, even more than I expected I would.

We drive to Winnemucca, Nevada the first day and on to Salt Lake City, Utah, the next. Today we walked all around the city, which is beautiful and historic. Went to Temple Square and learned about the Mormon history in this state. Very interesting. But the best part of the day was a visit to Ken Sander’s Rare Books. This is a lovely shop with a large selection of used and rare books and very knowledgeable employees. I walked a mile or so to get there — in 100 degree heat — so I am glad that it was such a fun place to spend an afternoon. I even bought a few books.

Blogging from Thoughtful Husband’s laptop is not as easy as I would have predicted — no signal sometimes and I don’t know how to post pictures here. I have a lot more to tell you, but it is late Monday night (after midnight in Utah) and we are headed off to Wyoming early tomorrow morning. Got to get some shut-eye. I’ll post in more detail when I can. I miss blogging on a daily basis. Tom and Huck were not nearly as excited as you will be to hear about Ken Sanders Rare Books!

Chapter 212 Bon Voyage

The mid-day sun

A pale pall of smoke hovers over my city today, a charred odor noticeable as soon as I set foot out the door. There are no fires in my city, nor even in my county. But there are over 800 fires burning in the state of California (no exaggeration), and the smoke from all of these has formed a large cloud that hangs over most of the state. The sky is tinged orange by the obscured sun and the combination of the radiant orange light and the smell of smoke make me I feel like I am in Dante’s Hell, which is very appropos to my current work on digital layout of the Dante catalogue. (Almost ready to send a final draft off for a critique!)

I am just about ready to go on my trip, so I’ll probably be out of contact until the end of the weekend, when I will attempt to blog from the road. I’ve updated my “What I’m Reading List” over in the sidebar. Take a look if you like. Pure summer-related fare with one serious novel (Ron Hansen’s Exiles), and one Laura Ingalls Wilder book thrown in for the trip.

What I think of as a sort of reverse-pioneer trail (going West to East) awaits us as we journey through seven states. Though we’ll see lots of great things (and lots of kitschy things like The Reptile Pit and Robert’s Prarie Dog Town) along the way, for me, this is a pilgrimage to the home of that writer whose work sparked in me a love of reading, a love of history, and a secret desire to live on a farm — Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The adventure awaits. If there’s one thing of which I am sure, with Tom and Huck along for the ride, this trip promises lots of adventure.

See you on the prairie!

Chapter 211 June Priorities Update

Since I leave on my Little Ride on the Prairie vacation in only a couple of days, I figured I should update my June priorities, because it will be well into July when I return.

Here are the June priorities. Their current status is noted in bold print.

JUNE 2008 PRIORITIES
+ Finish the Dante catalogue. A final draft is being mailed on Friday to two trusted book people for proofreading while I am away on my trip.
+ Sell some books! Did better than last month.
+ Talk with a friend who is thinking about becoming an antiquarian bookseller. Such fun to meet someone seriously contemplating entering the trade.
+ Meet with a bookseller in San Francisco to talk about the book business and to buy books. I had a wonderful trip to Argonaut Book Shop. Bought lots of goodies, and had I an unlimited income, I would have bought more. Also got to know the owner, Bob Haines, jr. and his daughter Angela.
+ Attend my favorite library sale. I‘m glad I made the effort to attend. I had better finds there than I have had in a while.
+ Start filling out contract for Central Valley Antiquarian Book Fair, to be held in Sacramento on September 20. Done and mailed.
+ Purchase books needed for California Rare Book School at UCLA and start reading them. Still need to do this one.
+ Write an article for BookThink. Done.
+ Write an article for Bookshop Blog. Submitted an article. Waiting to see if it will work for them.

What’s on tap for July? Well, I’ll be away until July 15. The only real goal is to finish, print, and mail the Dante catalogue. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I am finally close to doing so!

Chapter 210 Prairie Music

Much like my vacation plans, my musical tastes are all over the map. Much like my interest in the diverse subjects of Western Americana and Dante Alighieri, my musical tastes are eclectic and strange. Both Western Americana and Dante are interesting, but neither has anything to do with the other.

My teenage years were in the 1980s, and that music, both new wave and heavy metal is, for better or worse, still the soundtrack of my life. So is the 1970s music of my childhood (Steppenwolf, The Who, Paul McCartney, The Doobie Brothers). Some of the 4th of July music is classical. I really like classical music, too.

I know. I am a conundrum.

In preparation for our trip, I went through all of the music I have stored on my computer in iTunes over the past few years and made a Road Trip Playlist for the iPod. I’m publishing it below. I realize that my musical taste may disappoint or shock some of you, but I like what I like.

I tried to include some road trip favorites (Roger Miller’s King of the Road) and some novelty songs (C.W. McCall’s Convoy) along with Western movie and tv soundtracks (Bonanza, The Magnificent Seven, Rawhide). I also added some Independence Day themed music (X- 4th of July), as we’ll be in traveling on July 4th. Then there’s the song I added for Thoughtful Husband’s ___th birthday, which we’ll celebrate while on the trip.

Finally — I guess I’ll just ‘fess up — I added some favorite country tunes. I believe I am the only citizen of the Bay Area who likes country music. It’s a lonely genre to love if you live here. Of course, being a citizen of the Bay Area, I also added some awesome surf music (The Dillengers’ cover of The Magnificent Seven). You’ll find almost a little of everything on this playlist. From Bruce Springsteen to Bing Crosby, from Van Halen to Van Morrison, from Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings to The Who, from Stewart Copeland and The Police to Aaron Copland, from Joe Jackson to Johnny Cash. You’ll find it all here. I hope you either enjoy it or will forgive me for my strange taste in music.

Song Name / Artist Name
Can’t Hardly Wait - The Replacements
Lost Highway - Bon Jovi
What About Now - Lonestar
Where the Streets Have No Name (Live from Rotterdam) -U2
Route 66 - Depeche Mode
Road Trippin’ - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Holiday Road - Matt Pond
Texarkana - R.E.M.
Life Is a Highway - Rascal Flatts
Road Trip - Gary P. Nunn
Forty Miles of Bad Road - Duane Eddy
Hot Rod Lincoln - Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Convoy - C.W. McCall
Going Mobile - The Who
Magic Carpet Ride (Single) - Steppenwolf
Rockin’ Down the Highway - The Doobie Brothers
Band On the Run - Paul McCartney
Kiss Me on the Bus - The Replacements
Secret Journey - The Police
Man in a Suitcase - The Police
Wanted Dead or Alive - Bon Jovi
The Big Country - The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus & Crouch End Festival Chorus
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - The International TV Orchestra
Rawhide - Frankie Laine
Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys - Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson
I’ll Fly Away - Alison Krauss & Gillian Welch
Ride Cowboy Ride - Riders In the Sky
Riding the Winds of the West - Riders In the Sky
Ghost Riders in the Sky - Riders In the Sky
Rodeo: IV. Hoe-Down - Michael Tilson Thomas & San Francisco Symphony
Let the Day Begin - The Call
Home Town - Joe Jackson
Who Says You Can’t Go Home (Featuring Jennifer Nettles) - Bon Jovi & Jennifer Nettles
The Promised Land - Bruce Springsteen
Take Me Home, Country Roads - John Denver
I Love This Town - Bon Jovi
Happy Birthday - Concrete Blonde
4th of July - X
I’m Free - The Who
Song of Freedom - Bing Crosby
Independence Day - Martina McBride
This Land is Your Land - Boston Pops Orchestra & John Williams
You’re a Grand Old Flag - Carl Davis, English Chamber Orchestra & Marilyn Horne
Top of the World - Van Halen
Old Dan Tucker - Bruce Springsteen
Happy Land - Peggy Duncan Singers
Melody of the Plains - Roy Rogers
Theme (From Little House On The Prairie) - Cathodic Orchestra
Unsere kleine Farm (Little House On the Prärie) - Various Artists
Theme from Little House on the Prairie - 101 Strings Orchestra
Lonesome Road - Madeleine Peyroux
High Summer - Van Morrison
Sunshine - Matt Costa
Move Along - The All-American Rejects
Six Days On the Road - Dave Dudley
Magic Bus - The Who
California Dreamin’ - The Mamas and the Papas
Heaven - Los Lonely Boys
California - Phantom Planet
The Boys Are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy

Chapter 209 Bathroom Reading, Or The Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Found in a Book

Found a nice book last weekend in fine condition. Bought it. Took it home and began to examine it more closely and to write an accurate description of condition. Flipped through the pages and found a single sheet of (unused, thank God!) toilet paper used as a bookmark. Enough said.

Chapter 208 Road Trip Plans, Or, Getting There is Half the Fun

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our family’s upcoming road trip vacation. We’re leaving in less than a week. Friends are watching the house. My parents are watching the dog. The mail and newspapers have been stopped. We’re starting to pack.

I’m starting to think about what I might encounter on this drive across the prairie land of America: bugs, heat, thunderstorms. Tornadoes, maybe? (Hope not.) In my head, I hear that lonely opening note of the theme song to the Little House on the Prairie TV series, and I imagine not a covered wagon, but its modern equivalent — an RV, plodding across prairie grass and snaking along solitary roads.

On our way, we’ll encounter Robert’s Prairie Dog Town, a palace constructed entirely of corn, and, so I’ve been told, a creature called a Jackalope. We’ll see Salt Lake City, the Golden Spike that connected the Transcontinental Railroad, and a rodeo. We’ll witness the spouting of Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park. We’ll be at Mount Rushmore for Independence Day fireworks (actually, for some reason they take place the day before Independence Day). We’ll visit my late father-in-law’s hometown of Ipswich, South Dakota. And, of course, my personal pilgrimage, the destination which I’ve personally spent hours imagining: the Laura Ingalls Wilder Homestead in De Smet, South Dakota.

Here, we will spend the night on the Ingalls homestead in a covered wagon, much as I imagine Laura and her family must have done over a hundred years ago. We are all excited for what is, for us, the adventure of a lifetime.

When I consider road trips, I think about some of the original “road trip” stories. There’s Homer’s Odyssey, which tells of Odysseus’ long walk home from the Trojan War. There’s Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, made memorable to me by a great teacher. There’s Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, in which much of her childhood is spent on her family’s westward journey. There are other, more modern road trip stories. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road comes to mind. And I realize that much of my expectation about our trip and the adventures that await us comes from the images formed in my mind from books.

We will have some long days of driving, particularly through lonesome places like the Nevada desert. Tom and Huck will have to entertain themselves without skateboards. Thoughtful Husband and I will have to navigate through unknown territory and find our way back from wrong turns or mismarked roads. This is the part of our trip which I have not pre-planned but which I suspect I will remember long after it’s over.

“Where are you guys going?” friends ask as our departure draws near. When I tell them, most respond with shocked surprise: “You’re driving across the Midwest for a vacation?” Perhaps it’s been a while since they read Homer or Chaucer or Laura Ingalls Wilder or even Jack Kerouac. They don’t remember that the best road trips are about the journey and not the destination.

Chapter 207 Report of Last Weekend’s Book Hunting Expedition

I went to my favorite library sale and an estate sale over the past weekend and found more interesting items at one time than I have found in a while. Most of the items I found are outside of the areas in which I specialize — Western Americana, pioneer women, and Dante Alighieri. You never can tell when you will find something good at a library sale or an estate sale. That’s why a bookseller always has to be on the lookout, even though she may often come home empty-handed.

Below are two interesting items from my recent book hunting expedition. Both are related to aviation. Both feature rather unlikely aviators. Both are signed by their respective authors. What are the odds of that? I have no idea, but it seems unusual.

Neither of these books are in any of my areas of specialty — Western Americana, Pioneer Women, and Dante Alighieri. Why did I buy them? I guess that Neta Snook Southern, an early female aviator who gave Amelia Earheart flying lessons, is a pioneer in her field, so she kind of falls under one of my specialties. I just bought the books because they are both first editions, have dustjackets, they cover interesting topics about unlikely subjects, and they are inscribed by the authors. That relatively low library sale price didn’t hurt, either. I think they can be sold for a reasonable profit.

The Flying Priest was commissioned by Pope Pius XI to minister to the people living within a 1,650,000 square mile territory that extends from the eastern shores of Canada westward to the 102nd longitude in mid-Canada. Its southern boundary runs across the middle of Hudson Bay; the northern limit was the North Pole. That’s a lot of ground to cover so he did it by flying in an airplane!

From the dustjacket: “Neta Snook Southern was one of the pioneers of aviation. Back in the days before World War I, when airplanes were covered with fabric and pilots were considered daredevils, Mrs. Southern was one of the first women in the air. In 1917, she took up a career in aviation, becoming a commercial pilot and a flight instructor.” Her most famous student: Amelia Earhart.

My favorite quote from the dustjacket: “We learn about the heart-shattering moment when you realize your plane isn’t going to clear the trees at the end of the runway; what it was like to zoom upside down over a crowd of cheering spectators; and how a woman felt when she had to fight to prove her worth in a world that belonged very much to men.”

I had two other exciting finds over the weekend. The first is a first edition Big Sur by Jack Kerouac in lovely white dustjacket. (This is the book I was covering with a mylar dustjacket protector when I cut my finger the other day. Not to worry. Tom and Huck saved the day by getting the dustjacket far away from my bleeding finger.) Why did I buy a modern first, another area outside of my specialty? The short answer is that the condition and the price were right.

The second find is a really interesting piece of history that I look forward to researching and cataloguing: it is a scrapbook containing maps, documents, and newspaper clippings from 1898 and it was put together by the navigator of a U.S. Navy ship that was involved in the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish American War. (Are you familiar with the phrase, “You may fire when ready.”? Well, that was the command of Admiral Dewey to Captain Gridley during the Battle of Manila Bay.) The scrapbook is in a very beat up (spine missing, edges ragged) and very unassuming ledger-type book, and it was just waiting among the 60,000 other books at the sale for someone to pick it up and realize what an amazing trove of information awaits inside. When at a sale with a lot of books, I always take the time to look at books whose covers have no titles or illustrations. These type of books have sometimes been among the best of my finds.

I also considered it my duty to rescue this book from the dreck (other library sale books in poor condition) by which it was surrounded. Even though this item also falls outside of my normal areas of specialty, I simply could not pass up the opportunity to hold it, read it, and research it.

Chapter 206 R.I.P. Tasha Tudor, and Thanks For Making It Alright for Me to Have an Office at My Dining Room Table With Children Underfoot

I checked my email this afternoon around 1:00 p.m. (PDT) and was happy to see an email from someone on the Ex-Libris mailing list with the subject “Tasha Tudor”. Though I only recently came to appreciate her work, I was excited to read anything I could about her.

I clicked on the email with joyful anticipation, expecting to see a question about Tudor’s work or an announcement of a new illustration or book.

Instead, I was saddened to learn that Tasha Tudor died today, at the age of 92; though I was comforted to read that her family and friends stayed by her side in her final hours.

You see, Tasha Tudor inspired me. Not because of her lovely drawings, for drawing and painting are not among my talents. She inspired me as a mother who worked as an illustrator, as someone who worked according to her own terms. The career-caregiver duality that many women embody has always been a difficult one for me to reconcile. Sure, I want to have an interesting career, but I also know that I feel fulfilled by home and family and I don’t want to spend most of my waking hours away.

I quit my job after I had my kids. My teaching salary and the cost of daycare were about equivalent, and we decided that the best contribution I could make to the family would be to stay home full-time with Tom and Huck.

I discovered that I love being an at-home mom. I also learned about antiquarian books around this time, and I began to make plans for opening a business selling antiquarian books when the boys started school. When the day finally came that Huck, my youngest son, went off to school, he waved good-bye and I cried a little bit. Then I got work on starting my business.

I felt a bit silly opening an antiquarian book business from my home. “I’m working,” I’d tell friends and family this past year-and-a-half when they asked what I did when the kids were at school.

“Oh. That’s great. What are you doing?” would be the usual reply.

“I’m selling antiquarian books — you know books that are out of print and hard to find and of interest to a collector.”

“Terrific. Where’s your shop? I’d love to come and visit.”

This is the part where it usually took courage to answer. Would I be taken seriously? I usually mumbled quickly, “Umm. My shop is actually online. I work out of my house, at my dining room table, usually while the kids are at school.”

I felt silly admiting that I cleaned off my workspace each day so my family could eat meals or that my two sons plus the triplet neighbors were usually scurrying around underfoot after school. I felt comfortable working that way, but I secretly wondered if others thought I was just wasting time when I could be out building a more stable, traditional career in an office somewhere.

Last Christmas, I received a book as a gift, The Art of Tasha Tudor by Harry Davis, and I read how Tasha Tudor got her start. I was charmed and re-assured to know that she, too, worked at her dining table, that she too was home full-time with her children, and that she fit in her work when and where she could. And she was fulfilled by this. She didn’t care about the fact that everyone else seemed to live in a different century than she did. She didn’t care that, before she became famous, she could have made more money by taking a traditional job.

Charmed by her lovely Corgi Cottage and the life she made for herself, I was inspired to appreciate and be proud of the life I am making here.

Thank you, Tasha Tudor, for making it alright for me to have an office at my dining room table. Thank you for showing me that one can work according to her own terms and on her own schedule. Thank you for showing me the beauty to be found in making a home. Thanking for telling me to take joy in the life I make for myself.

Rest in peace.

Click here to read the original post I wrote last winter about Tasha Tudor and working at my dining room table.

And here’s one more post about Tasha Tudor and her fearless life at Corgi Cottage in Vermont.

Click here to access Tasha Tudor’s memorial website.

Chapter 205 Ouch!

Sorry for the short entry today. The cut on my right index finger from yesterday hurts even more today, and since it is right at the top of my finger it hurts especially when I type. So, instead of a rambling post, here’s a funny picture of — what else? — a book for you to look at. Actually, it’s an old magazine, and though it’s not in good condition, I bought it at a recent library sale because the boy on the cover looks suspiciously like Tom.

I plan to be in less pain tomorrow. Thanks for understanding!

Chapter 204 Let’s Be Careful Out There, Or, On the Job Injury

This afternoon, I was waiting for Tom and Huck to go outside and finish building a teepee out of some bamboo that my neighbor cut, and I decided that I could cover dustjackets in mylar protectors while I waited. I figured that I would have lots of time to blog while they built a teepee.

Unfortunately, while putting a mylar dustjacket cover/protector thingie on a marvelous, 40-year-old, shiny white dustjacket that belongs to a marvelous first edition of a well-known book which I found at an estate sale over the weekend, I incurred an on-the-job injury.

I know. You are wondering what type of injury could befall a relatively quiet antiquarian bookseller. After all, antiquarian bookselling is not always the way it’s portrayed in the movies, with forbidden manuscripts, secret agents, bombs, and car chases. Being an antiquarian bookseller is a relatively risk-free job, from an injury standpoint.

Let me tell you what happened:

I pulled the shiny white dustjacket off the book and laid it out flat on the table. I then fitted the dustjacket protector around the dustjacket, and made the appropriate marks on the dustjacket protector so I could trim it to size. I took the white dustjacket out of the protector and put it next to me.

I then picked up my handy little rotary cutter, something which is normally used for cutting a straight line in fabric, but can also be used to cut a straight line in a mylar dustjacket protector.

Somehow I did not cut a nice straight line in the dustjacket protector. Instead, I cut a nice, perfectly straight line down my right index finger. Like a tiny breach in a dam, the long, thin sliver of a cut yielded a giant flood of liquid. In this case, red liquid. Blood!

“D*!&%n!” I shouted.

Within earshot of the tender boyhood ears of Tom and Huck.

Ooops! Oh well; this was an emergency.

And not because I was bleeding. There was a marvelous, 40-year-old, shiny, white dustjacket lying on the table near me!

“Mom? Are you ok?” the boys yelled from the next room.

“I’m ok — One of you get over here, pick up this dustjacket and get it away from my hand right now!” I pleaded.

I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details. Though small, it was a deep cut, and so it bled for quite a while. I am now all bandaged up, but the band-aids on my right index finger make it too hard to type the post I had in mind. It hurts when I hit the keys. I hope to be back in full blogging force tomorrow.

For now, I am applying direct pressure.

I am happy to report that not one drop of blood spilled on the lovely white dustjacket. I consider it the mark of a true professional.

Yes, I know. A true professional would not cut a mylar dustjacket protector with a sewing implement. Clearly, I still have lots more to learn when it comes to the duties of a bookseller.

See you in the stacks!