old-time romance

When I was a kid, I was always lamenting the fact that I lived in the present and everything worth being romantic about was over. Old steam locomotives and world's fairs and black and white movie glamour queens. What did I have? Freeway overpasses and 7-11s.

Then I ran off with the circus and had all the old-time romance I needed. Granted, I was still following the show across freeway overpasses and gassing up and getting the occasional awful snack at a 7-11 (what else are you going to do when it's the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere and you've got a hundred mile jump?). But I also had big tops and ostentatious ringmaster words and clown shoes.

Now I realize I'm in another modern place of old-time romance. More and more as bookstores and books with actual paper in them are disappearing. It's a strange place to be. A scary place. My life is... what?... seventy percent books? Spend my days reading them, shelving them, creating displays for them, paying tribute to them. Spend my nights working on writing them. I can understand the move toward e-books, to using fewer resources, but oh those things, books.

Maurice Sendak once said when he was a little boy he loved books so much he would bite them. Feel and smell and taste that wonderful book in his mouth.

I don't want to lose this. Sacred object. I read this line this morning in a blog I follow by a writer named William Michaelian:

"I’ve suspected for quite some time that books also read people, and that pages remember sighs and fingertips."

[yes, i realize the irony that i read it on a computer]

Someday books will be like dirigibles and cobblestone streets and bumper bangs. A way to show, in a movie, that it's the old time. And I'll be an old lady with floor to ceiling bookcases. I'll know that in my youth I lived during the romantic time of books. The young folk will laugh at me because I'm so old fashioned I refuse to let the doctor use the booksaber and drill a tiny hole in my head to insert the new book transmitter that's all the rage. I think I'll also have bumper bangs.

pacific northwest reader window display

I love the fact that both books with my work in them, that I've had the privilege of creating a window display for, have been visually beautiful books. Makes my job extra fun. I get to make my display not only a tribute to the book but to its cover art--just as a good piece of cover art is a tribute to the book nested inside.

The Pacific Northwest Reader's cover--and all the rest of its physical layout--are the work of Ecco's Greg Mortimer. Who, like the rest of the contributors, offered up his eye and his hand gratis, to benefit the ABFFE--the American Booksellers For Free Expression. Here's my take on his lovely cover. The two pieces below are the top and then the bottom panel of the display--in jpeg form since photos of window displays, with all the glass glare, just never do the display honor.



The empty space in the lower right-hand corner of the top panel is where the actual copies of the book go. In fact: shiny, glare-y photo in entirety below...


There was a little girl wandering around the Powell's porch, an hour before opening time, as I was taking my pictures. Mother sitting up against the adjoining wall like they were camped out. I kind of hoped to capture the little girl's reflection somewhere in my pictures, but I didn't.

Alright, one more shot, this one from inside. That great display space in the Purple Room, directly at the top of the stairs.



[i love love love greg's use of slant. to see more of me loving the use of slant you can go here.]

[portland noir window display post here]

pacific northwest reader spotlight #11

Do you remember getting your first library card? I don't remember this at all. I do remember the wonder of a place with that many books that you could just take, and I remember harboring great terrors that I would lose a book and have to go to jail or something. Or have to tell my Mom. Who would probably have been as understanding as she was the day I came home from playing with a friend and apparently said something along the lines of, Mommy, guess what, Shannon taught me how you can sneak candy from the Minit Market.

She was very understanding, but I didn't come here to talk about my one brush with petty crime.

Here's Susan Scott's lovely library memory, from her essay "The Wilmot Memorial Library," in The Pacific Northwest Reader...

"At a very tender age - those were simpler times - I was allowed to visit the library alone, since it was so nearby. And when it was time to check my books out, I'd been instructed to explain that my grandad's card was 'there' under the glass - I could barely reach high enough to point - and I was allowed to use it. This worked well unless there was a new employee, who had not yet been introduced to the eccentric borrower down the block, let alone his very young granddaughter. The whole story had to be explained all over again and a co-worker fetched to corroborate, before I'd be allowed to leave with my books...

"Eventually, I asked one of the library ladies if I couldn't have my own card. 'Well, you could,' she said, 'but you'd have to be able to write your name.' Well, that was no problem, I quickly explained - I'd been able to write my name for ages. She looked at me skeptically, but the 4- or 5-year old girl before her could, obviously, write her name and, indeed read, so the form was duly filled out, and on my next visit to my grandparents, I skipped happily down the street to pick up my newly minted Seattle Public Library card. As it was handed over, the librarian told me I was the youngest person in town to have one!"

Susan Scott is lucky enough to have begun her bookselling career at the legendary Books & Co. in New York City, 30 years ago. She is now the manager and buyer at Secret Garden Bookshop in Seattle - but she still checks books out of the library.

epic

Mini-story improvised by cell phone. We meet our heroes in the middle of a back and forth in which I've bugged out on a proposed plan to hang out with my brother. [notice he's the one who texts with proper english and i'm the one doing txt spk.] The action begins...

[Frank] Just remember, not only do I know where you live, I have a key... so beware!

[Me] Release the hounds!

[Frank] I'm stealthy like a ninja. I fear no hounds.

[Me] OK. I hide under bed. Theres not much room under here with the books & wedding dress & joses old bed & - whoa - what the hell is that!

[Frank] It's me... I already snuck in!

[Me] Eep!

[Frank] ::sinister laughter::

[Me] Theres a tussle. Books fly out. As the dust clears (there's lots of dust undr there) Im standing unharmed & u crawl out in my wedding dress.

[Frank] I'm just as deadly in lace as I am in black...

tattoo weather

When the weather gets sunny here in Portland, it's time for Stephen to comment about the kooky Oregonians going crazy with shorts and flip flops even though it's in the sixties, and it's time for me to do some happy tattoo watching. What have I seen today? A semi-crude skull and cross bones at the back of a guy's neck. A bar code on the back of someone's arm. Some really intricate sleeves including imagery like water and anemones (sea. i didn't realize for a long time that an anemone is also a land flower). A two-toned five-pointed star on the back of a guy's neck (is that something in particular? i've seen that same tattoo before. same spot). Some really nice black and white work on a guy's legs--an eagle, maybe and... I can't remember. I remember the images were scattered across his legs like they'd been tossed and just left where they landed. I was saying the other day that I tend to be distracted by placement. That good tattoos can be diminished by a poor choice of where you put them. Stephen wasn't as finicky as I about that. He likes that passport stamp aspect of tattoos. How each one tells a little story of a place in your life.

Overheard while walking past the workspace of the Blue Room (Literature) at Powell's today:

"Would you have some time for the letter O?"

pacific northwest reader spotlight #10

I'm just a day away from putting up my window display at Powell's for The Pacific Northwest Reader. Today I've been doing some printing and assembling. I always have fun putting displays together but I do have to admit, it's extra fun when a little piece of the book is my own.

A little piece also belongs to Sarah Hutton, who, in her essay elaborates on one of the defining characteristics of the Pacific Northwest. Her piece is appropriately titled Dreaming of Rain...

"I think the rain is the first thing that people think of when they think of the Northwest. What eludes most is the constantness of it. In most places, 'rain' is a finite weather pattern. You can say, 'Oh, it started raining,' and then an hour or two later look out the window and say, 'Oh, it stopped.' Just as the Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, there are dozens of words for rain here, from misting to spitting to drizzling to pouring. Each carries its own nuances.

"And even if it is not raining, the sky is often gray for months at a time. It has its own beauty in a way, the flatness of color, the shifting of clouds, the muted light, but some people just can't handle it. There was one year, early 1999 I think, where the region had had more than a hundred successive days with precipitation of some kind. Three straight months. I was talking to my mom on the phone during this period about how wretched the weather was, even by Seattle standards, and I said, 'I'm starting to understand why people jump off the Space Needle.' (I realize in hindsight this was not the best thing to say to a worry-prone mother.) A few days later, a box with 'Priority Mail' stamped all over it was waiting for me. My mom had sent me a Sun Box: Sun-Maid raisins, sun-dried tomatoes, sunglasses, sundae toppings, lip balm with sunscreen, Sunkist oranges, and some chocolates wrapped in smiling sun foil. I lined the items up on my kitchen counter like an altar. The sun finally did break through a few days later. (Coincidence?)"


Sarah Hutton graduated from Seattle University with a B.A. in English and Philosophy. She is currently the store manager and children's book buyer for Village Books in Bellingham, Washington. She still likes the rain.

[photo courtesy of bradleyolin, flickr creative commons.]