haste to the Wedding #2

As both clans collected on Friday, some of us became tourists. The siren song of the Hirshhorn & the National Gallery enticed us to the Mall and the free hotel shuttle to the Metro made it easy. We popped up on the Mall like the White Rabbit, right next to the Castle and a short walk from the front door of the Hirshhorn. Now, I can talk about paintings forever, and have to be restrained. But, trying to describe the plastic arts, especially sculpture, is beyond me. Suffice to say that the Hirshhorn Museum is the most important collection of modern and contemporary sculpture (large and small) in the whole wide world. If you don’t care about sculpture, come and see this collection. If you already love sculpture, you already know. After communing with the plastic arts of the 20th century, we meandered to the National Gallery.

The house of pictures, in fact, the family album of the United States of America, this is the National Gallery. A huge edifice, built in 1937 by the W. P. A. during the Great Depression, the one that made our grandparents so tight with money. I limited myself to the American Gallery, where I could commune with some of my favorites, Winslow Homer, John Sloan and, especially, John Singleton Copley. I love Copley, his art is great and fragile at the same time. His portraits of our founding generation are evocative and telling. There is John Adams, the old Congregationalist, who never really understood the separation of church and state. And his great friend and nemesis, Thomas Jefferson, looking all abstemious and mild. Copley was a great portraitist from the shoulders up, but, bless his noble brow, he couldn’t paint the human body. There on the wall is his whole family, with legs that are too long and arms that come out of nowhere. Stick with the close-ups John, ’cause anatomy ain’t your thing.

Part of the fun of huge collections is seeing stuff you didn’t know was there. The fine People of Boston MA have loaned to our nation the final iteration of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial by August Saint-Gaudens. It is not only the finest piece of plaster casting I’ve ever seen, it is the largest. This stunning bas relief represents Shaw and his Massachusetts 54th Regiment, marching toward certain destruction. The 54th, of honored memory, was an all black volunteer unit, led by the bluest blooded Boston Brahmin. This piece is both heroic and heartbreaking. Fighting for abolition and liberty, these men were sent on a suicide mission, and went. Freedom is a cruel master.

We had very specific instructions to be back at the hotel and ready to dine by 6:30. Since the whole wedding party and many guests were staying at the hotel, it made sense to get all of the folks invited to the rehearsal dinner together in one rented transport. It really did make sense. You may think that herding kittens or Unitarians is hard, but you don’t know. Somebody is still in their room, somebody isn’t answering their cell and one grandma is still in transit. Finally, all the Unitarian kittens were on the little bus and off we went, into the warm night, headed toward barbeque.

That which is called rehearsal dinner has long since ceased having anything to do with the wedding rehearsal. It is party thrown by the groom’s family the evening before the wedding, and ours was a hell of a party.

Cozies

Racketty Packetty House #9

cozies

I see you every day, hard working, kid loving, community caring people with not enough time for yourselves. Yesterday you all were perfectly manifested in a lovely, tired young mommy of 5 week old twins. All she wanted was something she could read in short increments, a story that would keep her company but not break her heart. There are places in our lives for powerful literature, tales of loss, betrayal and deepest sorrow, novels which examine the bitter and dark places of the human condition. But, sometimes, we need stories that will just keep us company by introducing us to small communities where common life is lived with one or two surprises. These are the books that I call cozies.

Cozy is a very valuable and under-appreciated word. Its origin is unknown, perhaps Norwegian, and its first known date is 1709 meaning: warmth. As a noun it is a covering for a teapot, of either padded or knitted fabric, intended to keep the pot and thus the tea warm. In our post-modern, cynical world, cozy is a suspect term, disingenuous at best and delusional at worst. Well, too bad, because sometimes we need a good cozy to relax us and knit up our frazzled nerves. We need stories of community and difficult relatives and the small comings and goings of basically good people.

Although most cozies are mysteries, there are prominent exceptions in regular fiction. Maeve Binchey weaves tight, clear eyed tapestries of small Irish communities dealing with the friction between traditional and modern life. Circle of Friends is her most famous but Scarlet Feather and Whitethorn Wood are every bit as good. On this side of the pond, the great Fanny Flagg, who does not write fast enough, tells small stories about home towns that call through the years to those who leave. Flagg’s work always carries a single punch that shakes up the reader and pulls the whole book together (dang she is good). Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is Fanny’s best known book but Welcome to the World Baby Girl and all of the rest of her all-too-small oeuvre are Southern treats of the highest quality.

Sometimes, in the genre of cozies, old glories can be regained. Regency Romances can be absolutely terrible, hackneyed with little dialogue and badly drawn characters. But the colossus who invented the genre has returned to remind us just how good Regency romances can be: Georgette Heyer wrote from the middle 1920’s till the early 1950’s and hers are without question the funniest and most lively, with the best drawn characters, of any romances ever written. They are true comedies of manners and Mme. Heyer is second only to Jane Austen in her language. About three months ago a customer and I were bemoaning the absence of Heyer on the open market. I went to the computer and found a miracle. Harlequin, who owns the Heyer rights for the US market, has put out a full, unified edition in trade paperback. What larks, to have the great master back.

For most readers, a true cozy is a mystery. Although Jane Marple may appear cozy to the uninitiated, with her garden and her knitting, don’t be fooled. Dame Christie has one character refer to Miss Marple as Nemesis, meting out justice without mercy. Besides, Christie isn’t happy unless at least three people are dead.

The true cozy is a small mystery, only one corpse and an amateur sleuth to unravel the tale. Cozies come in series and almost always have a female protagonist . Relationships is a hallmark, with the heroine accompanied by a group of friends and relations, willing to help, often getting in the way and continuing from one book to all others. Cozies may have important male characters and the finding of true love by our central character is often a secondary theme for the series. Unlike the gumshoe/shamus mysteries of Chandler/Hammett et al, the women of cozies have jobs and often small businesses that bring them in contact with a larger community. Most of these books take place in small towns that can support the tea shops (Laura Childs), bakeries (Joanne Fluke), quilting and knitting emporia (Mary Danheim) and book stores (Lorna Barrett) that makeup the cozy universe.

In one very fanciful series, a young mother and townie is aided in her investigations by very helpful and loving ghost (Nancy Atherton.) If the setting is a city, our intrepid amateurs stick to one neighborhood where everyone knows them and they can always find parking . Cozies are idealized us, working and living and by the way solving dreadful murders.

This is why we love cozies. The lives of the heroines are not too much different from ours. They are brave and smart and loyal and have friends who love them. They also fight the good fight for justice and often mercy. Lost treasures are found, bad marriages end and the dead find rest. These books are perfect for beaches and pools and any little space of time you might have to yourselves.

Please, enjoy.

The Troubles

RpH #8

the Troubles

The first time I remember wearing orange on St. Patrick’s day was in first grade. We were going up the stairs to the classroom and a classmate said I wasn’t wearing green. But my dress was of a small, floral pattern that had both colors in it, so no pinching occurred that day. My father, who did not go to church, taught me always to wear orange on the Irish national saint’s day. Sometimes it was as simple as orange crepe paper around my arm and for a while I wore orange with black, for sorrow. But always orange on St. Patrick’s Day, because, Daddy said, I am a Protestant.

Ireland is a mother of nations, a large island in the Atlantic ocean that has sent her sons and daughters all over the world, looking for food and work. The Irish were occupied by the English for hundreds of years, their language was outlawed, their church was suppressed and their land was given to Protestant Scottish farmers. The sorrow of Ireland is known, sung and fought, but what the hell does it have to do with me?

My paternal great grandfather was Mathias Gibson, a poor lad with bad lungs who came from Belfast. He ended up in New Hampshire, married Clara Hubble and fathered Dorothy Viola, my father’s mother. Dorothy didn’t care about the Irish connection except to refer to the Kennedy Clan as “lace curtain” Irish. She was a lifelong Republican who grew up in Boston. Family legend holds that Mathias would put an orange ribbon in his lapel and “go down to Southy on St. Patrick’s Day to discuss fine points of theology with his Catholic brethren.” So I was a Protestant before I confessed Christ, a political distinction but harmless.

Then, in 1972, the marches and riots of Bloody Sunday were spread over the news and Protestant and Catholic became very real words. Although a child of the Vietnam War, I was still in the cozy world of political black and white. As a high school drama queen, I was drawn to the poor benighted Protestants of Northern Ireland, only to be slapped in the face with a long ugly history and very complicated politics.

There was Ian Paisley, (Paisley, a town outside Glasgow in the Western Highlands of Scotland from whence his forefathers came) in clerical collar and always with pectoral cross, yelling about how the Catholics had to be controlled or they would enslave the world. And Gerry Adams, talking normal as milk, the representative of Sinn Fein, but in the beginning he was the mouthpiece for the provisional IRA, as narrow-minded and violent as the Ulster Unionist Party. He also scared the British so much that the BBC was not allowed to broadcast Adams’ voice. Both parties were blinded by their individual visions of national victimhood. In between were a disenfranchised Catholic minority and a brainwashed Protestant majority. The complaints were centuries old and, it appeared, intractable.

The most telling story for me was a little vignette that was played out across a no-go zone in Derry. Two boys were throwing rocks at each other, after their day together at school. So Michael yells over to Sean, “Sean, that’s me ma. I’ve got to go in for me tea. See ya tomorrow.” There was the soul of the Troubles , stubborn boys throwing rocks at each other because that was what they were taught to do. Those rocks were bombs and made the five counties of Northern Ireland a very dark and bloody ground. The Troubles of Northern Ireland were my political education. The victims were preyed upon by para-military thugs on both sides, no perfect good or bad. And I also learned to be ashamed of some Protestant voices. Ian Paisley prepared me for Pat Robertson.
  And I learned that even the most entrenched conflicts can be undone. In 1989 the impenetrable Wall came down in Berlin and Germany was unified. For a small time the undoable seemed doable. But that wall was only 50 years old; nothing could possibly be done about the 350 year old sorrow of Northern Ireland—unless, of course, the enabling power, Great Britain, had finally had enough. When it was no longer supportable for Britain to be in Northern Ireland, then Britain chose to leave, with its Protestant supporting army. But how? How could the earliest sins of the Empire be undone?
  Out of the Pine Tree State of Maine came George Mitchell, a retired American senator and the complete honest broker. Using the quiet and implacable negotiating techniques he honed in the Senate of the United States, Mitchell did the impossible and forged the Good Friday accords. Now, almost ten years later, the British Army is leaving Northern Ireland and there is a Target store in Belfast.
  Terrible sorrows can end, the sins of empire can be overcome and hope can prevail. All that needs done is the impossible, and that only takes the belief it can happen. The North is turning into a normal place and I can pray, with all honesty, for a untied Ireland.

 Erin Go Bragh.

that boy, those tigers

RpH #7

that boy, those tigers

What we see is what we know. First impressions are the engine of romance and mystery, and some history too. Just try to undo your first impression of an historical figure. Because of our first impressions, we recoil when we find out that Jefferson had a black bed slave and that FDR knew about the death camps and did nothing. I fell in love with Thomas More when I was 13 because he was Paul Scofield, with that perfect ruined face and endless voice. When I finally read More, I found a narrow minded pedant who didn’t want me to read the Gospels because he thought I wouldn’t understand them correctly.

In the realm of children’s picture books, image is everything and every picture tells a story. Pictures give us Madeline and Curious George and Gold Bug and everything else. In Goodnight Gorilla, Peggy Rathman tells us the entire story in pictures and the story is complete. But what happens when a great story is ruined by really bad pictures? I speak of The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, first published in 1899, the boy and the tigers.

Little Black Sambo, the very words make us cringe. The pictures from this book were used for at least 75 years to demean, denigrate and defame African Americans in particular and Africans in general. This is because the defamers didn’t spend the time to read the book. Point the first, Sambo is not from the mother continent of the human race, Africa, but from South India. The Imperial Brits, in their colonial madness, called anyone who could handle more than ten minutes in the full sun without suffering second degree burns a black. Point the second, Sambo, Mumbo and Jumbo are all smart. Mumbo runs a tight, thrifty household and she can handle the sudden appearance of a large amount of tiger ghee. Jumbo is so smart and hard working that he can afford to kit his son out in the latest style, that perfect green umbrella, those perfect red slippers and all the rest. Jumbo is also very resourceful, always traveling with great copper pots, ideal to collect anything of value that might come along, including tiger ghee. And then there is Sambo his own self.

There he is, walking down the road in the finery that his mother’s thriftiness and his father’s acumen have produced. Sambo is fearless and quick of wit. He loves the beautiful things he’s been given but he knows what matters—he has to come home alive. So he bribes the truly deadly and really stupid tigers and gets home with his skin intact. Jumbo collects the ghee, Mumbo cooks the pancakes and both are very proud of their brilliant boy. So what is not to like in this story? THE PICTURES.

The original pictures are dreadful, racist and badly drawn. How dow do we tease this good story away from really bad pictures? Simple, make new pictures. In 2007 an edition of Bannerman’s story was published with new illustrations and it made all the difference. Set in South India, Christopher Bing paints a beautiful and lush landscape to aid the rebirth of Bannerman’s words. Jumbo is tall and handsome and Mumbo is resplendent in a sari of orange and red. Sambo is a good looking boy with the sly eyes of trickster who can outwit tigers. Change the pictures and you can regain the story; all it takes is a new look through new eyes. Bing’s gorgeous illustrations of Bannerman’s story resurrects it for new readers. The first impression will change and someday, no one will remember that Sambo was a terrible insult. They will just think of a terrific story about a very smart boy and some very vain tigers.

what shall I read to my child?

RPH #3

read, read what shall I read to my child

I love selling books. It fulfills the two great desires in my black heart: to advise and to help. Although connected these are separate impulses. When my customers accept advice, it suggests that they think I might know something. When I can help them, it implies power. Guidance and power are a wonderful combination. But there is one more element that entices me to life as a bookseller: picture books.

Adult books, fiction in especial, don’t have pictures. Neither do the young adult novels, filled as they are with swooning teen vampire hunters. But when the reading life begins, illustration is the support of story. Beautifully drawn images draw the eye and through the eye, the mind. Not, mind you, the edgy monochromes that some publishers use to attract young hip parents; yes, the parents have to read the books, but they are not the audience. The person in the lap is the audience, and that person wants clear images with bright, contrasting colors, you know, like, Disney, Berenstain Bears or Dora.

Scooby Doo, Spider Man, Fancy Nancy and all the other character-driven 8”x8” tomes rule your life. You read them in the store and, when you buy them, you read them at home. You buy them because you ask your beautiful and brilliant 2–5 year olds what they want. Please forgive me if I sound shrill, but WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? You don’t ask that brilliant child if she wants to eat or if he wants a sweater or to go to the doctor. You don’t even ask your child if she wants to go to bed. No, you are the parent and, in all other ways, you take excellent care of your perfect child. It is only literature where you hand your adult wisdom over to the wild and easily influenced whims of your small, illiterate child. Dear Folks, they don’t know what they want. Why do this to yourselves?

I have not come here to berate you but to put you in your proper place. You are the mommie/daddie, you alone know what is best for your small folk. They will like what you like and, even if they don’t right now, they will soon. You are the source of all that is good and true; whatever you read to them will be what they want. So, you get to decide what is read at bedtime. It might be old stories like Blueberries for Sal or new wonders like The Library Lion and Niccolini’s Song. These and hundreds like them will make for deeply desired bedtime reading and they won’t rot your parental brain when you read them for the 100th time. But, asks the reasonable parent, how do I know what’s good and what ain’t? Well . . .

That’s me, that short, ball shaped grey haired woman, sitting on a step stool and sorting the 8”x8”s. I read the catalogues and the reviews because you don’t have time. The publishers send me galleys so I’ll flog their latest book. In other stores and other towns, I look different but, at heart, I’m a kids’ bookseller. Take advantage of my knowledge of children’s liturature and I’ll tell you the truth. Although I will sell you any book you ask for, I will never lie to you. And I am dedicated to your child wanting to read, almost as much as you are. Just ask me what you want and I’ll give you what you need.

take me for a ride in the car

a ride in the car

The stars aligned so that Lizzye and Philip could take a ride in the car. After a lazy-day-off-together start, we headed up the 80 to Pinole and thus to the 4. Stockton was our destination and good beer our desire. A ride in the car is a vacation for me. All we need is a destination, usually a late lunch somewhere. (Remind me to tell you about the Olema Inn!) Brewpubs have been our preferred destinations but we had run out of them until 2 weeks ago. Our local started pulling ales from Valley Brewing Company and Philip was enticed. Since a ride across even part of this great state is my idea of a very good time, we took advantage of the MLK holiday and headed for Stockton.

We had wanted to come to her over the 4, my second favorite highway after 395, but missed our turn and ended up taking Vasco Road down to Livermore. Those are beautiful hills, very unstable and good only for cattle grazing and watershed. The brilliant winter green against the grey of winter rain made for a stunning drive.

We picked up the 580 and headed for Tracy and the 5. This is the blood stream of California. Huge trucks filled with the bounty of of the stae roar up and down this most important of roads. Stockton is just north of Tracy and we came to her southern border and took Pershing into the city. By the way, why does everyone pick on Stockton? In the history of this best of all states, Stockton is essential. A river and aggie town with a fine university, this dear old burg does not get the honor that she has earned. What a sweet place—neat, medium sized houses on pretty streets. The campanile of the University of the Pacific rises above the flood plain, anachronistic but handsome. What with streets that change their names when crossing avenues, we got a little turned around but found our destination, the Valley Brew pub and sports bar.

We have some experience of pubs. We know them in Inverness, York and our dear Grosvenor in Pimlico, London. Our local is Barclays in Rockridge, Oakland where Philip had his first Valley Brewing ale. Valley Brew is a sports bar, with very high ceilings, brick walls and good sight lines. It is not a pub and certainly not a brew pub. If the brewery is not on the premises, it ain’t a brew pub. But Valley Brew is a good place to drink VERY good ale and beer. The brewers have noticed that it gets warm in Stockton and have produced some lovely hot weather beers, the aptly named Central Valley Golden and a wheat ale. The double IPA is so hoppy and green it smells like a open field. The Black Cat Stout is intense and dry, the second greatest stout Philip has ever had. (his favorite stout cannot be had outside of Scotland.)

My crab cakes were crabby and held together with cornmeal, a delightful difference. Philip’s ribs were made with the house stout, a splendid sauce that is very dark with a hint of bitter. We bought three bottles of their varied best to take back to Oakland.

The ride home was just what I needed—the broad flood lands of the lower Sacramento. Large rivers frighten me; they are great powers I don’t understand. The Sacramento is the exception. With so many dams and diversions, she is much gentler, like a great cat who has been declawed. I ride across the her flat heart, watching the herons in the flooded fields and the black earth that feeds the world. I’ve seen her magical headwater, coming out of a granite mouth in Redwood Park, Shasta City. Here on the flood plain, the Sacramento is a mighty water and the 12 from Stockton to Rio Vista is just the place to see her. Accompanying the white herons are assorted grebes and terns chasing each other across a classic valley cloud display. When the weather breaks in the Sacramento/San Juaquin delta, the effect is DRAMATIC! We are talking C.B. DeMille, with great rays of sun splitting the thunderous clouds and Mount Diablo looking like the Hall of the Mountain King.

The 4 and the 12, the narrow highways that cross the middle of our state, are a perfect way to see the Great Central Valley. These are the pastures of plenty of which Woody Guthrie sang and they give us our peaches and radishes and kale and and and on forver. I love these drives even more than Sir Francis Drake Boulevard out to Pt. Reyes. I get a mini vacation and enough time to do political theory and moral philosophy with my favorite traveling companion. Take me for a ride in the car.

Reading is Sacred

letters from a bookseller

#1. Reading is sacred

1) of the Eucharistic elements, consecrated

2) consecrated to, esteemed, especially dear or acceptable to a deity

3) of things, places or persons and their offices: set apart or dedicated to some religious purpose

Look up the word “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary and what you find is a circular definition. Sacred is that which is consecrated or set apart for a religious purpose. I stand before you, as a religious personality, with a 4th definition of the word. If religion is the relationship between a human and a transcendent, then I submit the sacred is that which opens the door. We, mortal beings, know the immortal in the material world and even in ourselves through the sacred. For some, mountains and valleys are that door; for them, the Sierras are transcendent.

Think of ancient sacred places where someone, long ago, had a soul altering experience: the well at Beersheeba, the Boh tree, or the valley of the New River— the name of these places is legion and all have opened a door. But not all sacred are great and well known. The totality of sacred cannot be measured; it is as infinite as the individual. The door to a transcendent can be as simple as using a bowl that your grandmother used, as simple as seeing a vista you’ve seen everyday that suddenly becomes real, as simple as handing someone a book.

Writing is what separates us as human. Our cousins, the other great apes, live in societies and use tools. But we alone among our order write down what we know. We write what we know, collect it in books and in it open the door.

Books are stories They have beginnings, middles and ends. Even manuals, texts and study guides follow that form. Novels and treatises, theology and metaphysics all begin in one place, offer information and then sum up. Collections of poetry, of essays and of short stories are other ways of telling stories. Editors tell very large, diffuse stories and place the poems or stories in very specific order, to support the arch of the collection.

Authors who collect their own stuff often tell the most complex and revealing stories. I offer two examples to support this: A Day of Pleasure and Axe Handles, by I. B. Singer and Gary Snyder. These books are beautiful spaces, buttressed by the individual stories or poems. Each of these are spaces of their own but together they create a greater whole. Singer opens the door to a small shul, where the walls shake with the voice of Reb Asher, the milkman. Snyder brings us into a hot day doing sweaty work where the deer lick the window sills. Stories upon stories and the book handler serves them all. Be we librarians or be we booksellers, we serve the story. Sometimes it is the clear and bitter story of Mme. Bovary and sometimes they are the tales of a frog and a toad.

Putting letters or pictographs together into words and thence into stories is very hard. I didn’t start reading until I was in 3rd grade and that drove my mother nuts. Every day I see the new readers, struggling through the heady adventures of the Berenstain Bears and the great essays on friendship of Frog & Toad Some children read easily and some are intimidated; one way or another we all have to learn to read. But even with all of the hard work, learning to read is not the opening of the first door.

The first door into the sacred nature of stories comes before reading, before potty training, even before memory. The door opens in a dim room, on a warm lap with an open book. Before we can read we already know that books are magical things that contain little worlds. Rhyme is the handmaiden of the word. From Jamberry to A Child’s Garden of Verses, the rhymed word enters our ears and becomes part of our DNA. I do not offer this as a scientific theory but as experiential fact. My store has a small stage that reproduces the Great Green Room from Goodnight Moon. The children take what they see at face value. They are in the book. It is to the parents that the words come, unbidden and automatically. Some of them cannot help but recite the whole book, and after over 60 years, Margaret Wise Brown strikes again. With clear rhyme, anyone can remember anything. Only music works better as a memory aid.

The lap reads the book and all too soon the child wants to DO IT MYSELF. They hunch over copies of Tamara Pierce and Lemony Snickett and ignore their parents when called to go home. They are the most loyal consumers, often wanting books they've already read. They will become the new fans of Stephanie Plum & Elaine Pagels and whoever is next.

That is where we come in. We specialize. Some of us read those beautifully written, dark modern novels. Others know poetry or sports or cookbooks or even picture books. Librarians and booksellers, we serve the stories and the words that make them. And I say that that which we serve is sacred. For the printed word is the portal to other minds, other sorrows and all of the gods. The word is sacred and we serve the word.