a moment in the life of my book: dream launch

In my dream, it's book launch night and I've just finished up with my event at Powell's. I am so happy. Everything went well. I read well. I answered questions well. I was surrounded by friends and loved ones.

Oh, but wait! We forgot all about the part where I sign books! 

I look around, and oh no, the crowd is leaving. The room already mostly empty. But we need to sign books! Powell's brought in all these books and they need to sell them!

Quick, I sit down behind a little table. Someone brings over the book cart and sets it up to the front and to the right of the table. The people who remain are trickling around the table, past the cart, not grabbing books, heading for the stairs to leave.

I lean forward over the table. Look at the front of the book cart. It's full of stuffed animals.

______________________________________________

(Book launch is tonight! I'll try to remember to sign books. Powell's downtown, October 7, 7 PM. More information is here.)

City of Weird Contributor: Rene Denfeld

I drive past Powell's City of Books' downtown store every weekday on my way to work. Usually I cross the river via the Burnside Bridge, but lately I've been cutting over to Belmont/Morrison and taking the Morrison Bridge. You could say it was because of the road construction on Burnside, and you'd be kind of right, but the real reason is that taking Morrison lets me come upon the Powell's marquee head on rather than from the side and gives me a better view of City of Weird up there in "lights." Looking at the book title up there is like looking at my own name, but it's better because it's also like looking at 31 other names, the name of Laura Stanfill our publisher, and all thirty contributors. 

Now that books are going out to stores and the events are about to begin, I thought I'd write a little something about each of these wonderful people who made this book what it is. I'm going to start with the writers who will be reading at the Powell's launch this coming Wednesday (facebook event page is here, just saying), and today's writer is Rene Denfeld.

I'm a total, raving fangirl for Rene Denfeld. When she sent me a story for City of Weird, I kind of couldn't believe it. It was like being given a short story by, I don't know, Audrey Hepburn (if Audrey Hepburn were a writer). I mean, there's the initial, wow, she's a remarkable artist thing, and the wow, she's a star thing, but remember, Audrey Hepburn was a humanitarian, devoting much of her life to UNICEF. Rene Denfeld is like this to me - someone I so admire for her art but who I am kind of in love with for the good she does in the world.

Rene is an investigator who represents men and women facing the death penalty. Many of whom are already on death row. I cannot imagine the hurt she takes into herself while uncovering their stories and when having to let her clients go if there is nothing else she can do for them. I fully believe that the personalities and identities we possess come from genes and environment and experiences and influences and injuries we cannot control. My heart aches for the people whose luck landed them on paths that lead to the prison cells where Rene often meets them. Even considering that mine might be an extreme viewpoint, the compassion Rene gives people - and the way she approaches issues with openness and without judgment... there's that fangirl thing again.

Here are her words from a wonderful feature in the Oregonian:

I find long-lost family members, friends, and other witnesses. I spend a lot of time in prisons, trailer parks, tenements and shacks in the woods. I locate ancient records in dusty basements. Sometimes I uncover terrible secrets. In a nutshell, I learn why. What made this person? Why did they do the things they did? it can be a very sad, difficult job. People honor me with their memories, and so I absorb a lot of pain. But it can also bring moments of profound insight.

Rene used these experiences when she wrote her beautiful, French Prix award-winning novel The Enchanted. I saw the same combination of imagination and boundless heart in "The Sturgeon Queen," the story she wrote for City of Weird. I had asked submitters for stories playing on sci-fi and fantasy tropes, all taking place in Portland, and Rene gave me a man-eating sturgeon - and so much more. It's a story about Portland's history, about human kindness and human oppression, about gentrification, growing old, telling stories, telling lies, and the lost world of the Native culture that once thrived in the Pacific Northwest.

Here's a taste of her words, from the opening to the story.

My grandma told me this story. You have to mind my grandma. She liked to say she was a descendant from the natives that once filled this area—the men who worked the falls, lowering their nets, the women who waded for wapato in the low-lying river fields. 

My grandma was fond of telling stories, and at one time or another, she also claimed to be a native of Russia, the daughter of a convict who married a slave, and, once, when she was knee-deep in Wild Irish Rose, said she was a descendant of Mr. Clark himself, on his wild ride up the river, on which she said he sprayed his seed like a cottonwood tree in spring. 

I love her writing for the heart, the wit, the lovely, musical language, the sheer storytelling skill of it. I'm so excited and honored to have this story in City of Weird.

Rene also wrote the nonfiction books All God's Children, The New Victorians and Kill the Body the Head with Fall. Her next novel, The Child Finder, will be out in fall of 2017.

a moment in the day: tom

It's Friday at work, and I'm at my desk with the earphones on, the weird ones that hook over your ears and hang across the back of your head. Plugged into the computer under my desk. They give me a slight headache but the sounds in my ears - the sweeps of big band, the Helen Kane boop-a-doops, the sparkling rain of Fats Waller's piano - make my brain happy as I edit my spreadsheets. My every Friday task, preparing the chosen titles to go up as New Favorites the coming Tuesday at Powell's, with extra special placement and a 30% discount.

This time one of the titles is Tom's. Tuesday will be official launch day for I Loved You More, Tom Spanbauer's first novel in seven years, published by my favorite publishing company, Hawthorne Books. I'm so excited I could jump up and dance, my head with the headphones on it yanking the computer clean out from under the desk, to drag behind me, across the floor of the Marketing Department, and play Ginger Rogers to my Fred Astaire.

Seven years - has it really been that long? I've listened to what seems like every word of this book come out of Tom's mouth, the group of us sitting around his basement table on Thursday nights. Years of Thursday nights as he wrote and edited and perfected this thing, sharing pieces with us at the end of workshop whenever there was time. All of us listeners felt like each note of his novel's music, each jot of his incredibly honed skill was ours in that basement because he gave it to us first.

This really is mine, this little moment, my fingers on the computer keys, putting his name in spreadsheets. The spreadsheet that I will send out to the merchandisers who will display the book. The spreadsheet that I will send out to the computer guy who will put the book on sale. The spreadsheet that I will forward to the graphic designers who will make a slide for our website and shelf talkers to sit under the stacks in the stores. Each shelf talker has a staff pick blurb, and guess who got to write Tom's.

No one is better than Tom Spanbauer at exposing the hidden pain inside us. In I Loved You More, he reaches even deeper, plumbing the terror of death, love, AIDS, cancer, propinquity, and the complex business of being a man in the world.

As I type his name into my spreadsheet, the song in my ears is Lulu's Back in Town.

*

Check it out on Powells.com here.

A moment in the day: moving

I sit at my new desk, facing my new wall. It's a dry erase board. Someone put my name on it, my name and an arrow, for the computer guy so he'd know where to move my computer when he got me all set up in here, my temporary workspace while they gut and remodel the Marketing Department. About half the Marketing team is in here, organized in a close ring around the inner wall of the conference room. Now that I'm all moved in and the computer is up and running, I could erase my name from the whiteboard but I don't.

That impulse to make a home.

When I moved into Powell's Industrial Warehouse a year ago, I brought with me as much as I could of my old desk: my tape dispenser, my cubicle decorations, my sock monkeys.

This afternoon as I packed it all up, my supervisor ducked under my desk to pull my computer out. He pointed at the small wooden box the computer sat on.

"Does it matter to you whether you keep that or not?" he said.

I didn't know what purpose it served.

"Yes," I said.

Now, and for the next three weeks, maybe a month, this whiteboard is mine. And those dry erase markers, the blue one, the orange one, the two red ones, those are mine. I'll probably never write anything on the whiteboard but I could if I wanted to.

I arrange my desk. I arrange my snowflake. I didn't want to throw away the tiny snowflakes Lenore and I stamped out of paper back before the holidays. Three sat on my desk all winter - then two when one disappeared. No real reason to keep them there - just that at first they were cute and then they were mine. It's spring and there's no need for paper snowflakes, but when I tossed one in recycling this afternoon - a tiny flick of paper into the bucket - it hurt to let it go.

Gently, I place my last snowflake on my new desk next to the lamp that I never turn on. Behind me, coming in through the open door of the conference room is the chug-chug of the warehouse and the sound of the Rolling Stones.

brave on the page at powell's city of books

Every Portland writer dreams of reading at Powell's City of Books - not to mention plenty of writers across the country. What a cliché to say, but it's true. I had the chance to be part of an event there in 2009 when Portland Noir came out. Though I wasn't one of the readers, I got to hang out at the table and sign books afterward, as a contributor to the collection, and it was definitely one of the thrills of my writing life.

Last Monday, January 7th, I read at that podium as part of the Powell's event for the book Brave on the Page. It was an incredible event in many ways. The lineup was...wow. Reading from their essays in the book, along with me, were Kate Gray [Another Sunset We Survive], Gina Ochsner [The Necessary Grace to Fall], Robert Hill [author of When All is Said and Done and a personal writing hero of mine] and writer / editor / publisher / powerhouse Laura Stanfill. After the readings, writing guru Joanna Rose [Little Miss Strange] moderated a panel on writing, process and creativity with Jon Bell [On Mount Hood], Kristy Athens [Get Your Pitchfork On], Scott Sparling [Wire to Wire] and Yuvi Zalkow [A Brilliant Novel in the Works].

Jon - Robert - Scott - Kristy - Laura - me - Joanna - Yuvi

When we gathered for a photo afterwards, Kate and Gina were lost in the crowd and we couldn't pull them over, but here's most of us - framed by a wall of black and white comic book pages. When you think about reading in the Basil Hallward Gallery in the Pearl Room of the City of Books, you have to wonder what art show will serve as your backdrop. I loved this. It was nearly floor to ceiling.

Robert Hill

We had a wonderful, enthusiastic crowd of approximately 150 people, including local writing luminaries like Tom Spanbauer, Stevan Allred, the recently-Oregon-Book-Award-nominated Carter Sickels. And one of the coolest things to me: so much of this crowd was writers. I suppose that's to be expected when the book is about writing and the essays speak to the writing life and the panel is all about craft - but as expected as it was, it still made me very pleased, so many of us gathered in one place to talk about this thing that is sacred to us.

Kate Gray

I really liked the mix of essays chosen for the event. Kate Gray's "Shiny Object, Shiny Object" was full of great suggestions for writing and getting the job done, all of which I [wish I could] adhere to. "...After an hour on a bike, the focus on one-foot-two-feet, spin-spin-spin, everything else falls away. And I am balance and shift and friction..."

Gina Ochsner

Gina Ochsner spoke about the very particular issue of cynicism and what it can do to our confidence, our writing process. "...If I allow cynicism to drum with the heavy hammers of no good, no good against the tympanic membrane, I hear the winter wren in the dark hemlock behind our house. I can't recognize the beauty of its song nor appreciate the fact that the smallest, plainest birds compose the sweetest songs..."

me

Again, it was a nice mix - because Kate and Gina's essays spoke about process and craft, Robert Hill and Laura Stanfill's essays combined writing topics with personal stories, and mine was a purely personal story - one that, when I lived it, had been full of shame and, when I read it last Monday, got a surprising amount of laughs from the audience. I love when the stories of your life do that:

"...Ring of the phone, his voice in my hear, high, almost feminine: 'Can I share something?'

"It wasn't really sharing since he'd only called to read me a story he'd written, and he didn't really want to know what I thought unless I loved it.

"Sometimes I didn't, but I hated to disappoint people..."

Robert's "Why I Write Out Loud" is about words - about sound and texture and cadence - but is also about family. "...I grew up on stories told at bedtime, told on car trips, told at the dinner table, after dessert. My mother told these stories, five or six of them, over and over, in rotation..." and "...Every syllable of these words told in my mother's raconteur's voice full of wit and Brooklyn inflection I loved hearing, every entertaining sentence told again made the usual silence of our family bearable..."

Laura Stanfill

Laura Stanfill's "Overnight" describes the writer / mother dilemma, Laura lying in bed, waiting for her daughter to fall asleep so she can get up and write her novel. But this tiny essay is so much more:

"...The boy in my novel gets diagnosed with a weak constitution, and he believes what the doctor says. He stays in bed. He reads and rests. He wishes. My daughter rolls over, tilts her chin up, breathes deep. She started kindergarten this fall. The shift of her world has begun. Someday both my girls will leave the house without me. They will be broken apart by small things. I tell stories about brushing teeth, drinking milk, getting enough sleep, instead of filling pages with lace and music. Someday my girls will choose whether or not to be good to their bodies..."

Joanna Rose

Sadly, I can't include a bit of voice from Scott, Yuvi, Jon or Kristy, since their portion of the event was all off the cuff, not in any book for me to refer to. But it was such a terrific panel. Funny, fascinating, just the right length. Joanna Rose led them through such topics as dealing with holes in writing, "fact vs. truth," and the benefit of writing groups - illustrated perfectly in a story Joanna told in which, while workshopping a scene with the Pinewood Table writing group, Scott Sparling learned that women in showers do not squat to pee.

Kristy Athens - Jon Bell - Scott Sparling - Yuvi Zalkow

These guys were great. Every one of them. And after the formal panel, Laura brought all of us back up front for a Q&A, taking questions from the crowd.

- A little goofing with the mic, which didn't quite reach me in the very center of the group. It was an honor to sit in the middle of these smart writers and try to keep up with the great questions and answers.

I said it was an incredible event in many ways, and another of those is the support Brave on the Page has had from Powell's. Forest Avenue Press is a very new press, a micro-press, yet here we were with a big event hosted by the City of Books. Also, the  books are printed just one floor down on the Espresso Book Machine. I think Laura Stanfill has something really special going with Forest Avenue Press, and the support she's gotten says loads about not only Powell's and the writing community in Portland but also - and most of all - Laura's energy, ingenuity, and smarts.

Laura Stanfill

After it was all out and over, Laura had this to say in an e-mail of thanks to all the participants:

"I keep thinking about reading in the Pearl Room as a dream come true and how it came true in a richer, deeper, more powerful way than I could have imagined. And nobody in New York made it happen, no agent or editor or outside party. We made it happen. Together." 

*

To order Brave on the Page from Powell's Books, click here.

To check out Forest Avenue Press, go here.

FAP is now accepting submissions from Oregon authors writing "quiet novels." To submit, click here.

found poetry in paper globes

In part to decorate for the holidays, in part to celebrate our 41st anniversary, Powell's decided, this year, to create some lovely art installations of hanging paper globes cut from the pages of damaged books.

The idea and most of the legwork and artistic work came from Lenore Ooyevaar, our graphic designer. I helped out by doing some coordinating with the stores, cutting some paper circles for the prototypes, and finally helping install.

You wouldn't think sitting around unfolding hundreds of paper globes would be fun, but I enjoyed the company of some great gals in Powells' Marketing Department, plus, one afternoon, a customer actually asked if she could help. What I loved the most, though, was all the found poetry inside these paper globes. Snippets of text, photos, old book illustrations. There was something new and beautiful and weird and quirky with every page I unfolded:

“…Cordelia and the depths of solitude…”

"...Twelve good men and true..."

The complete nutritional breakdown of "Graham cracker panda."

This creature...

An art book that shows how to take the pictures of 12 Hollywood actors, including Franchot Tone, George Brent and Robert Montgomery, and combine them to make, "...this charming young man—albeit a trifle effeminate..."

Molecular diagrams plus the naughty edge of Michelangelo's David...

Two different book pages meeting across the center break to take two fragments and turn them into one perfect [or perfectly awful] sentence. A spiritual book and a medical book: "I am filled with devine … mucus."

[sorry.]

Lists of artists on the right, bodybuilders on the left:

“...Narcissists make the best leaders...”

These cute cartoon illustrations in a book of, I believe, Jewish history:

I think this second one was at the bottom of the title page.

Found poetry in the table of contents of Vivilore, a book on marriage, beauty, sex, fashion, childbirth and motherhood, first published in 1904: "...An Endless, Widening Stream — The Ennobling Art — A Co-Laborer with the Divine — Intelligent Breeding of Animals — Shall Humanity be Left Behind?..."

cleaning out

Not last Saturday but the Saturday before, I cleaned out my desk and workspace at the Powell's Burnside store. [I know, I'm very late in posting this - no time...] Going through my workspace was the kind of excavation you'd expect from a hoarder like me. Since I got the job of In-Store Merchandising and Promotions Coordinator in 2008, I've been hanging onto supplies and objects I figured might come in handy at some point in my work. Along with these things were souvenirs of these last five years of my life including favorite little signs or shelf talkers I'd made, a couple of the panels from my favorite window displays, a slip of packaging from when Harper Collins sent me a box of Chocodiles to thank me for a display I put together [which i wrote about here], shelf talkers from when Portland Noir was a New Favorite...

All of these souvenirs I put in a box to take home or over to my new desk in the Marketing Department. I took down everything I'd tacked to my cubicle walls, the pictures of Maxx and Zoë and Noni, promo postcards from Stephen's art shows, a page torn out of a film noir calendar. Walking down to the car after that Saturday's work day, carrying my box, I told Stephen, "I'm taking this stuff to another desk, but it still feels like I'm fired." Just the act of carrying a box.

 

Above: another of the souvenirs I took with me. Three sock monkeys made for me for a display by fellow Powell's merchandiser Christopher Johnson. [i wrote about it and showed off pictures here.]

Here's a list of things I hoarded to use again in merchandising but never did:


Various old signs with out-dated graphics we were never going to put up again.

A long [long] multicolored paper chain.

A string of paper ladybugs [tangled].

Garland I made out of cupcake cups [crumpled].

A box with gold gift wrap.

Replacement Christmas light bulbs [tell me you don't have those in your house].

Little suction cups that go to nothing.

And these:

A gazillion paper flowers I printed and cut out and laminated and cut out, back in probably 2007 for a spring display in the Red Room, which were in a file folder in my desk lo these five years.

Yes, I threw away [most] everything.

powellitzer

Like lots of people, I was perplexed when I heard they'd awarded no Pulitzer Prize in fiction this year. What this seemed to be saying was that with all the remarkable lit books that came out in 2011, nothing was worthy - which sort of felt like an insult to everyone. I know there's more to it than this, but it got my nanny anyway.

It also sparked a bit of an idea. I spoke to some folks at Powell's and put together an image, and a quick, little display was born in the Blue Room [Literature] at Powell's City of Books. Our picks for the Powellitzer Prize.

The Blue Room and our book buyers had a good time with it, which made it a really fun project. They chose a short list of six lovely, smart books:

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach,

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman,

Open City by Teju Cole,

Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward,

West of Here by Jonathan Evison

and my favorite, Zazen by Vanessa Veselka.

Had I had more time to make the graphic, I may have gone more Portland and made him a hipster on a bicycle, but I figured staying with classical was best.

[when i was a kid, i thought it was the pulit surprise.]

on starting in my new position

I'm in the middle of the switch between positions at Powell's, from In-Store Merchandising and Promotions Coordinator to Lead Visual Merchandiser. Until the Burnside location chooses its new person for the position I'm vacating, I'll be going back and forth between jobs, but today I'll be getting set up in my new spot. This morning, I'm thinking about my early days as [to keep from saying the whole title again] Merchandising Coordinator, back when window displays were one of the largest components of my job.

For my first window display, I chose a couple of favorites: Tom Spanbauer and Hawthorne Press. Hawthorne was just reissuing Tom's first book Faraway Places, and I did up a window with Faraway Places on top and a slew of other great Hawthorne titles on the bottom. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures of it, but I do have an image of the panel I put together for the top of the display.

So DIY. I created it in Word and printed the pieces out in 8 1/2 by 11 on the copier and then tiled them together until I had a panel going 46 inches across. I think I put together the sky picture from some smaller sky picture, which I reproduced a number of times and then [again] tiled and smooshed around using some online Photoshop-like program until I had some odd, not-quite-real clouds, and hoped the lettering and the books displayed in front helped hide that fact.

Since it's such a long, thin panel, you can't really make out the quote I used from Faraway Places, one of my favorites. I'd write it out here, but since it's getting late and I have to get on to work, I've put the picture in again sideways and if you want to turn your head, you'll find some poetry.

I think it's sweet that not only was my first window display for Hawthorne Press, but now that I'm making this change, Hawthorne (and Faraway Places) is at the forefront of my work again, in our big promo for the month.

amp

This is what I was doing yesterday when the e-mail went out to the company announcing that I'd taken the Lead Visual Merchandiser position.

Making homemade little signs to hang in the windows of Burnside Powell's Building Two for their display on books about vacuum tubes and tube amps.

That font? That electric? That's how I felt.

Been thinking about when I first worked at Powell's, back when I worked part-time as a cashier and part-time running the Drama section in the Pearl Room. How I started taping local theater posters to the poles by the aisles full of books of plays. How those posters are still there.

Been thinking about before ... when I worked at the gelato shop across the street, 35 years old scooping ice cream with a group of sixteen-to-eighteen-year-olds, how I'd lean on the gelato counter and look through the windows and across the street to Powell's and wish I could work there.

Been thinking about before... when I'd just moved here. Seven years ago, living in my aunt Kathy's house, sitting for hours on her laptop, browsing jobs on Craig's List, never hearing back on applications, newly divorced with no job experience in the world but putting on clown makeup and losing my pants. How one afternoon, as I sat there tired and dejected, Kathy's computer with its talking clock announced, "It is one o'clock PM" and I burst into tears.

a moment in the day: the Remainders girl

With Cal, hanging holiday lights at the City of Books. Cal's on the ladder, jingle of the knot of keys latched to his belt loop, and I'm down below keeping the strand untangled. Turn, and to the left of me, hauling stacks of books onto a table, is that young brunette from the Remainders team. She's in profile, and lo and behold: a pregnant belly.

Though I've always loved children, though they've always loved me, I've never really wanted to have children. I was always more child than mother. Blanket in arms for most of my childhood, forever wanting to hold onto something soft to make me comfortable. Sometimes I wonder if it's all those blanket years that make me so full of wanting, now. Wanting that next publication, wanting that next comment on my last silly status update, wanting to fill myself up with cheese. Wanting, sometimes, with nothing on the other end of the sentence - just wanting.

I don't remember how old I was when I stopped carrying the blanket around all the time. Backy Dacky was its name, and it was pink, white and blue knit zigzag stripes that faded with all the holding, faded and got full of holes. As I got older, I used to cut tiny strands from the loose ends of the holes and knot them around necklaces to hang, hidden, under my shirts. I'm not even going to tell you about the time I tried to hide Backy Dacky at the bottom of my carry-on bag to take it with me on my trip to Europe, and I'm not going to tell you how old I was.


Fifteen.


Looking at the pregnant Remainders girl - I don't even remember her name - I'm struck by how similar that belly seems to my blanket of long ago. That holding. How lovely, to walk around the bookstore, to go about your workday, with all that joy, all that fear, all that miracle held inside.

blargh

[just because i liked the theme of yesterday's post...]

Step one: grab the garland and scissors and tissue paper and go down to Powells' Green Room early [8:10] in hopes that you can get all four window displays bedecked in the pre-customer quiet before your carts of books come and you have three hours of shelving to take care of.

Step two: pull out first window display case and lay down first length of tissue paper under display books.

Step three: open first skein [yes, i'm calling it a skein] of garland.

Step four: try to get the strand started without it getting tangled up.

Step five: oh, you've got to be kidding me.

Step six: pull it all off the cardboard carefully and try to extract the starting end of garland from the mess it came in.

Step seven, eight, nine, twelve, twenty-four: try to disentangle big knot of red sparkly madness.

Step twenty-five [8:30]: over the loudspeaker: "Attention Powell's employee Gigi, your carts are in in-coming. Gigi, your carts are here."

holiday catalog day

Two days to cram in the week's work at Powell's before Mom and Dad arrive and I take the rest of the week off. This two days happens to include the launch of the Holiday Catalog, which means approximately 55 staff favorite titles chosen to be displayed and sold at thirty percent off. Looking at it here in the glow of my computer screen, that just looks like some innocuous number, 55, but it's a huge endeavor. In the Green Room, it means reducing by half our display of author events books, moving into that open space half of our bestsellers and filling three cases with the Holiday Catalog books. In the Orange Room, this year, it meant completely reconfiguring the layout of about a third of the room, moving tables and spinner racks, taking books from this table and loading them into this display case, and vice versa. [I didn't have to move furniture - my hands were always on the books.]

This year, too, the morning was compounded by another huge display promotion switching out, and it was my job to take care of both. And to assist in the changing of signage posted and hanging in various places where the Holiday Catalog was going. I had help from some excellent coworkers, and still I worked pretty nonstop from seven in the morning to six-thirty last night to get all the books out, the signs up and four window displays put in place.

Holiday Catalog launch is always equal parts stress and exhilaration for me. No, maybe more exhilaration. There's something about running up and down the back stairs, pushing cart after cart down those corridors. Something about the pass of hundreds of books across my hands.

When I got home last night, Stephen had cheese waiting. We got in bed and put our feet up and watched Shirley Temple shorts.

Today: going in an hour early, maybe staying an hour or two late. Dealing with all the carts of books I abandoned at the end of yesterday. Overstock that needs to be put away, books that need to be relabeled for different sections. Posters advertising the Holiday Catalog need to go up. A hundred plus shelf talkers need to be notated with shelf locations and distributed. The books I order need to be tended to.

Then straight from work to an art opening and then home. And then home. Stephen and me and Nicholas and more cheese and a glass of wine. And then Mom and Dad.

sip

At the end of the mezzanine, waiting for the elevator with my cart of books, I reach and pull a book off. Open it. Careful. To where I was last when I was reading my copy at home.

"I am 11.

I play clarinet with my friend Brody and we tap our feet three-quarter time our mouths around the instruments our fingers between the struggle of learning and the dance of music our knees our lives nearly touching."*

Ding and then the swish of elevator door opening. Close the book and put it on the cart, take it down, put it on the shelf.

How many books on shelves have I sipped a bit of beauty from in my morning work? How many people have touched eyes on the very same words, the very same ink. What a particular and anonymous sharing.

[*from the chronology of water - lidia yuknavitch.]

parrot

On impulse this morning, alone in Powells' big elevator with a few carts of books, I pulled one off and decided to open it at random and read out loud. This is what I read before the doors opened again:

"You might think, who is this, and I might say, this is God and what are you to do? Or I might say, a bird! Or I could tell you, madame, monsieur, sir, madam, how this name was given to me - I was christened Parrot because my hair was colored carrot, because my skin was burned to feathers, and when I tumbled down into the whaler, the coxswain yelled, Here's a parrot, captain. So, it seems you have your answer, but you don't."

Cool.

That's Parrot and Olivier in America.

letter to lidia

Open letter to Lidia Yuknavitch.

Dear Lidia,

Please stop getting in the way of my morning shelving duties at Powell's City of Books. If I can't stop standing by my book cart on the fourth floor workspace, reading The Chronology of Water, I won't ever get down to the Green Room to put your books where they belong, in the Upcoming Author Events display in the Green Room. I'm on the clock - I only wanted to take a peek at the opening line - usually this is safe - rarely do I get sucked in.

It is not good for me to drop tears on the merchandise.

Yours,
Gigi

cuckoo part one

Excited to be seeing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tonight at Portland Center Stage. This morning, I took a look back in the old journal to see if I had said anything particular about the book when I read it (on audio, read by Kesey himself) back in o-eight, and found that I'd finished the last bit of it standing under the back awning of Portland Center Stage's Armory theater in the rain.

I did a window display at Powell's to promote both the play and the book, and also the shirt we carry that has the book cover reproduced on it.

Couple of photos...




The look comes from the promo poster PCS created for the production.

Review to come.

family fun

I love stories about wacky families. One of my February window displays celebrates these stories, including one of the wackiest of all, Jessica Anya Blau's Drinking Closer to Home. For the rest, I asked friends at Powell's what their favorites were. But there've got to be a million great stories about family dysfunction or kookiness out there. Anyone want to add a favorite?

First, the poor quality, full-of-glare window picture:



And the image by itself.

spotlight on diane rios

I've put a new Employee Spotlight display up at Powell's City of Books. This month, I'm highlighting Diane Rios [self-portrait above] who works in the French section and who is quite an accomplished artist. Here are some of her lovely stencil pieces, along with the interview she gave me about her life and her art.

me: How long have you worked at Powell’s?

DR: I’ve worked at Powell’s for 2 ½ years now! I started as a cashier, then moved to a Generalist position, and am now in charge of the French section. I post a blog on Powells.com about the most interesting French books both new and out of print that come into the store.



me: Has working at Powell’s or being around books had an influence on your art?

DR: Oh yes, I’ve made several prints of Powell’s itself, and am constantly inspired by the books and what they’re made of. As well as the beautiful covers of course, I love the delicious papers, old typeface, and lovely old ink illustrations in the books. New books are such a glossy, decadent treat, but the old books are my favorites--dusty, foxed, and with that bookish smell. I’m working on a very large print of a big stack of old books right now.





me: Which book has made a profound impression on your life?

DR: I would say Traveler by Richard Adams. I loved the books Watership Down and The Plague Dogs by him, so I tried Traveler which, strangely enough, is told from the perspective of Robert E. Lee’s horse in the Civil War. I learned so much about the Civil War and completely fell in love with Robert E. Lee and Abraham Lincoln. This led me to read several books about Lincoln and the Civil War which led me to love American history, which led to an interest in European history and now I’m a huge history buff and can’t get enough of the 1700 and 1800’s. And it all came from that one book told by a horse.



me: What are you reading right now?

DR: High on Arrival by McKenzie Phillips. It’s sad, but a really interesting snapshot of the 1970’s boho scene, which, being a hippy kid from Southern California, I can relate to.

me: Are you willing to identify a cheesy book that you like?

DE: There are so many! How about Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris by Paul Gallico? It was made into a movie with Angela Lansbury! There’s nothing like a salty old London Char woman to make you smile. You know he also wrote The Poseidon Adventure? He had real range!

me: What is your ultimate goal with your art?

DR: I want to sell my illustrations to national magazines and newspapers. I think my style would lend itself very well to editorial art. I would also love to do a children’s book with my stencils. I have one started called “Lulu in Paris” that I will shop around.



me: Who do you feel are the biggest influences on your art?

DR: Definitely early commercial art and turn of the century poster art from Paris--Toulouse Lautrec, that kind of thing. Also, I used to be a street artist, putting my stencils on walls until I was caught. So other street artists still influence me, but my work is a little softer than what I have seen come from other spray paint artists. More bears, horses, and French angel dogs, than is usually done.

me: Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?

DR: I just got back from a trip to New York where I met with Disney/Hyperion and Penguin/Dutton publishers. They were excited about my unusual style and gave me a list of artist reps to contact. I am submitting work to local publications as well as national ones, so stay tuned for exciting developments. I’m looking forward to 2011!




All images: copyright Diane Rios.

Check her out at her blog and on her website.

new workspace pictures

So many great improvements to the Merchandising Space at Powell's. I had Stephen take a few pictures with his phone on Saturday. One great idea he had was this corral for foam core signs on the right. (For the signs that have come out of the windows and can be used by merchandisers for projects in their rooms.) It's built so that I can store boxes below. All this stuff used to be stacked or leaned up against walls.



On the left in front of the white board is another new addition. Storage for rolled paper and posters and other long, thin items. Again: in the past? Leaned up against walls. Or stuffed in the corner behind my desk.

Then moving to the left, there's the little nook where my desk sits. That all used to be open. The new shelving unit and the semi-wall of wood create another corral for foam core signs (my stuff, which used to be leaned up against the wall behind my desk chair).

The little picture of the bunny came with the shelving unit. Powell's, on the floor and off, is full of stuff like this, where employees have put their mark on things. I love that, and wonder who put the bunny picture up and where the shelf was, then.



Moving into the little nook where my desk is, you can see (if you look hard hard hard) how I've started putting my own mark on the new area. The picture in the corner of the shelf, there, is Maxx and Zoë.

I love this little work surface built into the wall...



Open it up...



...and work on your panels for window displays.



Here's my nook for signs and other supplies. Including the three sock monkeys made specially for last year's Banned Books display and, on the right below them, the dried-up, petrified apple.