If You Know Me, This Is Not News

Old school, Empire, Michigan

 

“Old School”

 

Yes, I am “Old School,” as the phrase is used nowadays – as an adjective for someone who clings to old ways rather than leaping (blindly, I would say) into every new technology that comes along and leaving the tried-and-true behind. Recently a friend told me about a family whose expensive home is completely “paperless,” and I was, frankly, appalled. Family members read books and magazines but don’t keep them when they have finished reading. Out they go!

 

My first thought was, how terrible that would be for babysitters! 

I was remembering a family I babysat for regularly in my old home neighborhood, a young couple who had only two printed items in their home, the current TV Guide and a tattered Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. The parents stayed out late when they went out, there was only one child, and the parents paid well, but the barrenness of their home environment made the hours heavy going. These days, though, I suppose babysitters are simply glued to their phones after the children go to sleep. It’s a different world….

Three letters went out in the mail to friends this morning.

 

Someone who is “Old School” writes letters on paper, buys stamps for the envelopes, and trusts to the United States Postal Service to deliver. (Thank you, Benjamin Franklin and USPS!) One day last week I hit the jackpot and found four letters from friends waiting in my post office box. Jackpot!!! Letter-writing is not about immediate gratification but about taking time, “spending time” with absent friends, anticipation, and so much more. Follow this link to Leelanau Letter Writers and see if you might want to join a slow movement.

Well-used and well-loved road atlases from my home shelves --

A road taken....

Someone who is “Old School” loves maps – maps on paper! Yes, everyone can access maps on their phones and, in newer model cars, on screens built into the dashboard, but when you zoom in for detail, you lose the big picture, and I want both at once! I also want to make notes on the pages. A 2015 atlas is not “outdated” for me; it is redolent of trips taken and sights seen, possible roads as well as those remembered, because dreaming over maps is also another form of armchair travel. There are places I have never been, except through books and movies and maps. 

 

The ivy isn't plastic, either.

Writing checks is really “Old School,” and I make no apology for paying my bills with checks. How many companies do I want to have access to my bank account to grab what they say I owe? How large a balance do I want on my credit card to pay off every month? Fewer and fewer people bring either cash or checks to my bookstore, and I’ve adjusted to the changing times in that regard (there’s no staying in business without adaptation to change), but I prefer to pay my own business expenses and home bills by check. When told by another business a few days ago that they have “no way to process checks,” I was more than a little annoyed by that flimsy excuse. They had no problem “processing” the cash I handed over, and the “process” is the same: check or cash, deposit it in your business account! I have not stayed in business for over three decades by passing bad checks and do not care for the implied – though carefully disguised – insinuation. 

 

Home library bookshelves reflected on glass of photograph

Finally, being “Old School” means loving books!!! Printed books, bound books, books on paper – the descendants of the 4^th century Greek Codex Sinaiticus. Handier than scrolls, much lighter in weight than stone tablets, books properly bound and cared for can outlast the civilizations that produce them. Take a look at the Florentine Codex, a 12-volume work on the Nahua culture in Mexico, before and during colonization by Spain, with a general explanation of what constitutes a codex. A proud tradition of literacy.

 

For me, having my own home library is essential to feeling at home at all. Besides books, I also have many physical albums of photographs. Although more modern people (more modern than I will ever be) are content to store their “books” and “photographs” in a “cloud,” make no mistake about it: A cloud isn’t some physical warehouse in the sky; it’s just someone else’s bigger computer somewhere else, and that’s not good enough for me. I want to know that my photographs will be in my albums every time I open the covers, just as I want to know that the books in my home library will contain the same words, in the same order, every time I open to see and read those pages. No one is going to hack into some distant computer and alter my favorite histories, novels, essays, or poetry books!

 

(I don’t want “virtual nature,” either. I want nature, the real thing. What is the point of living on earth if we have to live as if we’re on a space station?) 

 

As I say, if you know me, none of this is news to you, and if we’ve never met you might guess at some of it because, after all, I have been a bookseller, with an open shop, i.e., a “bricks & mortar” location for over 30 years. Are independent bookstores all disappearing? The people who think so are not regular bookstore customers. Does nobody read any more? The people who ask the question are not readers. 

Other questions people ask: “Where do you get all your books?” and “Have you read every book in here?” The answer to the second question is no. As for the first question, there is no single answer. Some books I buy, some are donated to me, some are brought in by customers for trade credit. I don’t have time to spend running around to auctions and garage sales, but occasionally I’ll be invited to take a look at a private library and make an offer – or simply take off their hands as many books as I think I can use. In the past few weeks, I had a chance to look at three different collections that needed to be downsized or dismantled. Classics, being classics, are always in demand; in a village on the Great Lakes with a maritime history and a beautiful modern marina, boating books are always important for my collection; and philosophy, while hardly a bestselling section, is one of my personal specialties, so I was happy to fill gaps that had appeared on those shelves. 

Aviation had to move over in the bookcase with military history ...

to make room for more boating books, with more in the way.

Philosophy got a complete reorganization ...

from A to Z.

Audiobooks

 

Now, before anyone takes me to task for my old-fashioned ways, let me say that I understand perfectly well that as we age, there can be problems with eyesight or even trouble with hands, either making the holding and reading of physical books difficult -- or maybe you just want to listen to a book while on your stationary bicycle --- so this “Old School” bookseller has jumped on a modern bandwagon with libro.fm for your listening pleasure. Your audiobooks won’t cost you any more on libro.fm than you would pay the online behemoth, you can choose an independent bookstore to support, and naturally I will be happy to have you choose Dog Ears Books. Thank you!!!

Old school, Maple City, Michigan

Don't Turn Your Back on Serendipity

She is not amused!

‘Serendipity’ is one of my names for Sarah. (A far less obvious endearment is Triceratops, and I am still amazed that someone guessed that right off in the bookstore one day when I mentioned I’d come up with another pet name for Sarah, along with Sarasota; Serafina; Che Sera, Sera, etc.) It was a happy accident indeed when we found her at the Cherryland Humane Society shelter south of Traverse City. We could not have planned a more congenial companion than she has been all these years.

Most of my reading proceeds by serendipity, as well -- unplanned for the most part. I did plenty of assigned reading in my many years of school, after all, and while not regretting those years (or those books), and while continuing to along with group choices in our reading circle (which is the self-assigned reading of the group), one of the joys of my time of life now is being open to accidental discoveries. For instance, I’ll think to myself that it’s about time to read another modern novel. Here’s an author completely unknown to me. What does the back cover have to say about the book?

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters.

Well, that sounds promising. The little I’ve seen of Missouri when passing through was beautiful. I am one of three daughters: perhaps we should have been more “headstrong”? I enjoy reading of farm life, biographical or fictional. And so I open and begin to read The Moonflower Vine, by Jetta Carleton. The first chapter is comfortable, somewhat like the opening chapter in Little Women except that here the girls are grown up and only home on the parents’ farm for a summer visit. One of the highlights will be the evening flowering of the moonflower vine, so for that and for a picnic jaunt to cut down a bee tree, it seems all else must give way. Family priorities come across homey and simple. It looks as if living for a while in this book will be a pleasant, comforting escape from Michigan winter and general American political angst.

Further along, the sisters veer from their own assigned task, picking lettuce, to meander their way through the woods and down to the creek. There is time, Leonie tells the others, for her to catch a fish.

As they walked through the cornfield a freight train passed, a half mile beyond the creek, squeaking and laboring on its way to Renfro. 

 “See, I told you,” said Leonie. “There’s the Katy—it’s not three o’clock yet.”

Well, there’s a pleasant little surprise! David and I met the Katy train two years ago this coming April in Boonesville, Missouri, on our way back to Michigan from winter in Arizona, having gotten off the expressway for Paris.

Any novel presents surprises along the way, and so it is when an unexpected funeral prevents the bee tree expedition. Questions arise, too. Where is the fourth daughter during the annual summer reunion? Who are the absent husbands of two others, described only as a farmer and a mechanic? Only at the end of the first section of the book, “The Family,” do I turn back to read Jane Smiley’s introduction, telling me that after the “overture” of the first section I will meet with family secrets, sins, and tragedies. I close the book to read on the front cover “a rediscovered classic,” on the back the Chicago Tribune’s praise, “a distinguished achievement.” Well, I can’t say any of this is disappointing. On the contrary, it only whetted my appetite for the story to come. Seduced by the overture, there was no way I was going to leave without the experience of the entire symphony, and I spent most of Sunday in Missouri with the Soames family, people I’d never heard of two days before and am now very, very happy to have met.

“Do you have such-and-such?”

A common bookstore question, sometimes asked only a few feet past the door, and far too often a seeker receiving a negative response will turn back toward the door without coming another step in, saying apologetically, “I just thought I’d ask” (sometimes adding, “I just wanted to give you the business”). Well, I’ve been known to ask for specific titles and authors myself in other people’s bookstores. Of course! But to leave without even glancing at what’s on the shelves and tables? Other books in the same subject area or genre? The bookseller’s “Some of my favorites” shelf? The newly arrived used books?

I would not be so fastidious for quids! I’m sure that somewhere in Jane Austen there is a character who begins a line with something like “I would not be so fastidious as you are...,” but my aging brain has not yet turned up the character who uttered the line. Certainly, the line did not end with “for quids,” an Aussie expression I learned from a correspondent in New South Wales.

There’s another thing, I realize: The correspondence Kathy and I have enjoyed for six years began entirely by serendipity. Previous to its beginning, we had no idea of each other’s existence. She went looking online to locate an old beau, remembered the name of one of his college friends, searched online for that friend (David) and found me. I almost deleted her first message without opening it, not recognizing the sender, but I’m so glad I didn’t. We have shared so much over the years since that serendipitous beginning. Quite amazing, really.  I’m glad too that I did not pass up The Moonflower Vine because I’d never heard the name Jetta Carleton before. Say, I’ll bet Kathy would enjoy it, too!

A glance at the U.S. map shows how far Missouri is from Michigan, and a world map makes clear how far New South Wales, in Australia, is from both M-states. I love maps. Maps are magic. Lists can be magic, too. But maps and lists are not the territory, and sometimes there is no joy to compare with getting lost and being surprised.

Hint: There is more to Dog Ears Books than the dog.

When Sarah was a pup....

Near at Hand, Serendipity Awaits

 Serendipity. That’s one of my pet names for Sarah, along with Sarasota, Serafina, and Triceratops. I remember first learning the word ‘serendipity’ as a young adolescent and being utterly charmed by the idea, the word itself something delightful I’d come upon by accident. Since we found our Sarah at the Cherryland Humane Society, much to our good fortune, the name she already had then, Sarah, has come to mean much more to us over the years, layered over with new meanings as our time together accumulates.

But where is serendipity to be found? The dictionary I’m consulting (an enormous, heavy thing it is, too, but I do not wish it abridged or shrunken or digitized!) gives “good fortune; luck” as the second meaning of the word, while the first, I’m intrigued to learn, is “an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident” (Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, Fully Revised and Updated, 1996). In this first meaning, serendipity is a faculty possessed by a person, such as musical talent or being good at solving puzzles. So you or I or someone else might already “have” serendipity. Or maybe you think you don’t?

My hunch is that serendipity, like so many other abilities, can always be improved with practice and that practicing to improve serendipity involves nothing more than keeping one’s eyes and ears and attention open to the world and perhaps venturing down a different path from time to time. Here I think of what my friend said about people “taking orders” from GPS and failing to see the big picture or realize how many choices are available to readers of maps.

Certainly it must help, to be serendipitous, never to think of any situation or place or event that you’ve “been there and done that,” because it might be different this time around. Aren’t you an older and wiser person? Maybe more relaxed – or more confident – or more adventurous? And even if you think you haven’t changed a bit, circumstances themselves are never exactly the same from one occasion to the next, are they?

 As I typed the first draft of these sentences, a woman had come into my bookstore and was taking her time browsing the aisles. I was delighted! How often, it seems, people don’t take time to browse. They may buy a book they already wanted, but the rest of my treasures lie undiscovered, not buried at all but right out in plain sight, and this is true not only of the used books but even the new ones.

Here are a few treasures awaiting the adventurous and serendipitous browser at Dog Ears Books this first week of December 2014. I would write more, but I need to open one of these books....

 

Reprise, Reflection, and Promissory Note

Reprise

As promised, here are a couple more images from that old, falling-apart book. I'm happy to report, also, that one of the "new and scientific" pieces of advice for controlling insects is to halt the slaughter and extermination of birds. 

Millions of our song birds are slaughtered annually to satisfy the whims and follies of fashion. While quails, prairie chickens, partridges, grouse, pheasants and various other birds, that are friends of the farmers, are almost exterminated in order to satisfy the passion for sport. Were it not for birds no fruit or grain could be raised [emphasis added]. 

Further along on the page it is stated:

The insects which they [birds] destroy in the early season is worth three or four times more to the producer than the highest market price ever paid for these birds as game. 

And from ecology we turn back to matters of law and find this very pointed cartoon, one of my favorites in what remains in this copy of The Farmers' Manual.

The caption below the illustration, entitled "After the Law-Suit," reads as follows: "The lawyer takes both the cow and the milk, and leaves the two contestants to fight it out among themselves. Think about it....

Reflection

A friend e-mailed from the road, reporting that the GPS system had gone out on their car. She stopped at the next big box store to buy an atlas, and here's what she had to say about the whole incident: 

They used to be in the front by check out--now they hardly have any and they are in the back in the automotive section.  When  atlases and maps are obsolete, how will anyone ever see the big picture? How will they ever know how many choices there are  to get places?  Plus they'll all be indoctrinated in taking orders!  I'm ordering atlases of every place I might want to ever visit so I'll have multitudinous options.

I've always loved maps and atlases and like seeing it all in front of me, on paper, choosing roads and stopping places as we travel. Choices, yes. I'd thought of that before, many times. But I admit I'd never before reflected on how Americans are being "indoctrinated in taking orders" by turning when a robot voice tells them to turn. Wow! 

Give up our maps? Maps are one of the things autocratic governments don't want their people to have, and now, rather than surrendering them to uniformed police at our doors, we're nonchalantly shrugging and saying, "Hey! Whatever! Maps are obsolete." Thanks to my friend's story and her reflections on what it could mean for the future, I will treasure my maps and atlases more than ever before. Knowledge is freedom. 

Promises, Promises

Monday evening I finished reading a most gripping, most beautifully written memoir, written by the mother of someone here in Northport.  I've begun writing a review of the book and will post it as soon after Thanksgiving as possible. 

I'll also have more details on the announcement in the upper right-hand corner of this blog. Yes, Jerry Dennis and Glenn Wolff! Saturday, 3 p.m., Dec. 13! New books, new venture! Signing and conversation! 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Tune in again after your holiday for more news of Books in Northport. And until then, hang onto your maps!