Tuesday, November 29, 2005|
FINISHED...     Took these photos just before leaving the shop tonight, ahead of the second wave of snow. Yesterday's drifts had melted in town by midafternoon, but I still needed to turn the hubs and make my way back to the Old Same Place in 4-wheel-drive. Brought home hay, finally, for the hungry llamas. They galloped down off the hillside in the dark to chow down. They were down to a heap of crumbs early this morning when I took down the teakettles of hot water to their frozen trough and gave them their oat ration. Running all the necessary errands and keeping the shop open and getting home to the animals before late is a challenge. Plus, if there's any chance of precip, anything I have to haul—books, say—won't get hauled if I have to get out in 4WD, because I have no cover for the pickup bed. Tomorrow, though, I'll fetch more big heavy-duty garbage bags. I can seal book boxes up in the bags and haul them that way. I was remarking to a friend yesterday that I haven't had a lot to say here since turning capitalist. He allowed as how he'd noticed. Really, though, the problem is mostly coordinating computers. Now that I have the new operating system on the big blogging computer, I imagine I'll schlep it back to the shop the first sunny day and set it up again as a server. The crippling exhaustion of the month past finally has been displaced by garden-variety tiredness, and not too much of that. Today was a great day in the store. It seems the first wave of customers, in the earliest weeks I was open, were folks used to libraries, thrift stores, yard sales, and free boxes, and the prices scared them off. The next wave was the urbanized younger folks, Barnes & Noble-ites who smirked a lot at my miniscule inventory. Now, though, I've been discovered by the book people. I was so heartened today. One person after another opened that door and exclaimed: "At last! A bookstore!"; "How long has this been here?!" "Wow!" and one woman, leaving: "Please, please don't go away!" A businessman told me I was doing everything just right! And I sold lots of books. And I'm feeling pretty good about that.
In other news: yesterday I signed rental papers for a house in town. We move January 1, I don't know how we're gonna do it in the snow, but it will happen, AND the owner says she'll consider holding the paper if I come up with a down payment before someone else buys the place. Great big hooray. Photos of the new place to come. Love. |
Sunday, November 27, 2005|
We leave for the bookshop, and Sunday afternoon hours, in about 10 minutes. It was a cold cold night, in the teens at most. Right now it's 11:30am and 30° F (-1° C). The house never really warmed up after we got home from the shop last night. I have all the electric baseboard heaters going but the air stays cold somehow. Started a fire late, and I suppose it kept the house from getting any colder than it did. All of us curled tight under the blankets and comforters, never warm. I can see it's time to break out the sleeping bags for toppers. Then we'll be toasty. Ran out of water around 9pm yesterday evening, and a very good thing, too: I'd forgotten about turning on the big bulb in the pumphouse; the pipes would have frozen for sure. But that meant no jugs of hot water to melt the llama trough this morning, so I boiled up two old teakettles full of creek water and carried it down with the oats and melted the iceberg on their drinking water, and on Ranger's, too. I keep slipping on patches of ice. There's no real snow cover, just a peppering of graupel, and I forget to be careful how I walk. Black ice abounds.
Oh I can't wait, can't wait to live in a regular lazy house. |
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winter heat:   11:12:13 AM  comment [] trackback []
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I didn't get the shot where the whole herd was advancing on the dogs. Darn. (And really—they've been known to kill a dog or two...)   11:09:14 AM comment [] trackback []
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Last week's greenhouse post: moonflower vine in pot with epazote going to seed:  Salvias and artemisias and a rosemary:  night-blooming cereus still in recovery from last winter's die-off extending upward near hen&chicks:  figgy still doing well (as of last Sunday... I'd better check today):  11:06:47 AM comment [] trackback []
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Saturday, November 26, 2005|
(remember: find the camera cord... find the camera cord... ) Can't seem to stop working long enough to blog. What's up with that, anyway? This is me pausing to reach out. Thanks, everybody, for your great recent comments. I have received in the post a postcard from smallponderings Mark, a beautiful poet's timepiece. And another postcard from Dr. O, a sweet sketch in ink of the Omed family's new kitten, Loki. Both go up on the bookmark board... Wheeeewww... it's 3:30pm and I'm [interruption... teen couple browses... smiles, leaves] running out of steam. I've acquired several (many) thousand books from the Main St. thrift store going out of business this weekend, as well as a pine bookshelf, and a sidewalk OPEN sign, and I hope no bad karma. Snowed overnight, half-inch. Very cold today, but the sun shines, at least. I put down a red blanket in the straw-floored shed for Ranger, so he'll understand where to go when he is cold until I get home from town after dark. P.J. has left for Los Angeles. Another gift: she gave me a store-bought bar of handmade lavender soap and the key to her house—BATHS!! I can't wait.
I have a new CD called Sounds from a Bygone Age, Volume 1.
Romanian gypsy music recorded in 1976 in Bucharest. Ion Petre Stoican,
violinist. But it's the horas that feature an instrument called a
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Friday, November 25, 2005|
Somehow the camera cord wasn't among the armful of spaghetti I dragged home when I transferred the big computer from the shop, so I wasn't able to upstream photos over the break. Tonight, I hope. We're getting ready to head into town. The dogs have gone bonkers about a group of deer passing by. When I let them out, they charged the little herd, but, as deer do in the fall, instead of running off, they not only stood their ground, but assumed threatening stances and gaits and advanced en masse on the now-alarmed doggies, who ran back to the house and turned to bark instead from the relative safety of the stoop. I have a photo... Later. Thanksgiving was madness. I hadn't planned to be here on the holiday. All year I'd planned to take Brian and attend some community function somewhere, spare myself the cooking and baking, immerse myself in mass chitchat so I'd be less likely to grieve the passing of family gatherings, the extinction a tradition. But alas, all there was out there was a one-hour dinner at the Christian Life Assembly. Instead, then, because our neighbor P.J. had put off her return to Los Angeles until Sunday, at the last minute I invited her over. She supplied the thawed duckling, I supplied turkey wings (and a chicken I never got around to roasting), and I spent the day cooking after all. But a month's worth of neglected housekeeping had to be remedied first, and so the whole day was a chaos, a disorganized mess of activity, ending finally, though, with big plates piled with feast before a crackling fire in the gathering dark, only about 4 hours later than I'd predicted. The duckling was sumptuous, the giblet gravy first-rate (after I strained out a few unfortunate lumps), and the pies: my first effort at sweet potato-pecan pie turned out to be the best pie I've ever made, notwithstanding the pastry tantrum I threw along about 11:45, and the substitutions of lemon extract for missing vanilla, walnuts for missing pecans, and maple syrup for (thankfully) missing Karo syrup. P.J. was terrific company, and the hysterical level of daylong activity left little time for gloomy thoughts. Brian, who had partied the day before at his activity center, was surprised and delighted by the second round of feasting. It rained all night, and threatens to rain all day. I'm glad Gunter is stashed understairs; he'd freeze in the greenhouse. Ranger, though, out in his pen, will not be a happy camper. He never seems to get the fact that there are two little houses he can shelter in, and instead stands miserably out in all manner of precipitation to stare longingly toward the house. I can't leave him inside the house when I leave for the store, though, as I do the other dogs, so I may take him with me in the van. Only I can't, because I just remembered I have to bring home a bale of hay for the llamas today. Those pesky deer have had their own feast down in the pasture.
Big shopping day, I'm told. So off we go. |
Wednesday, November 23, 2005|
Well, my test post took, I see. So I'll quickly send another before packing up all the equipment and heading home. From there I will sort things out and upstream photos of Sunday's greenhouse and the finished bookstore, while I bake sweet potato-pecan pie and vacuum the furniture. Grand opening went so well last week, with so much magic, and I even sold $100 worth of books (even the reporter bought an Anita Shreve novel). Golden Egg has virtually flatlined since then, though. I have sold three Holy Bibles since opening the doors here, several versions, and may turn it into a bible store if this pattern keeps up. Today is discouraging because the dollar store down the street is having its one-year anniversary sale and gala, with free treats and coffee, and the sidewalks are thronged with families hurrying there, passing by my windows and gorgeous displays by threes and sixes in a continual stream back and forth, and it's so strange, as though they wore blinders, they will not even turn toward the windows to look in, right down to the toddlers. Open four hours, and no one has walked through that door. Sigh. Well, as I have said, I'll get through this. I say I'm on the ground floor here of a great Modoc County renaissance, a region-wide—nay, nationwide awakening of curiosity that may carry some few eventually to seek actual hold-in-your-hands books. Meanwhile, I'm selling CDs hand-over-fist online, and that plus online sales of the book inventory I'll soon add there may carry us through the potentially bleak weeks that may lie ahead.
P.J. from L.A. stayed an extra week on her property next door, and so
we have a Thanksgiving guest. Duck and game hens, potatoes and pies,
long walks and maybe a movie. A good day will be had by all. I wish the
same for you. Love. |
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Tuesday night, 22 November I turned the light out early, 10:30, but I could not sleep, my head so filled with lists and frets, deficiencies and concerns. Finally at a quarter to twelve I switched the lamp on and sat up with a gasp, as though finding the air after near-drowning, and threw back the blankets, tumbling Greta and Apple, and went downstairs for hot milk and honey. I checked email, too, and my blog stats, and my heart sank to see them so diminished by my inactivity. I vowed to bring the sick machine home from the shop tomorrow night and keep it here, because evenings are the only time open to me for that kind of diagnosis and repair, and it makes no sense to have the primary tool a good 14 miles away at that time. I noticed the bread dough I'd given up on in the cold kitchen finally had more than doubled, and bulged over the rim of the great enameled bowl like my own belly flesh spills over my Levi's, now I'm past middle age. I punched the dough down, and it shrank back, and I flipped it over and covered the bowl again with its loose lid, and, having drunk the milk, returned upstairs, where I finally opened a hardcover novel I've been saving to read for years, According to Queeney, by Beryl Bainbridge, and I was pulled in immediately by the opening description of the autopsy on the body of Dr. Johnson, and propelled from there into the flashback-narrative proper, until I knew I could sleep, and as I reached for the lamp again a white brightness caught my eye, and I turned to see the moon peeking through a gap in the curtain, all fuzzy, of indeterminate shape, because my distance glasses were not nearby and I have been reading and my eyes won't work that hard anymore.
And a gush of words spilled into my head then, and again I tumbled cat
and dog as I ferreted a spiral notebook from a nearby stack, and a pen
from the dresser, and began this post to you to tell of these minutes
past, in the rhythm and language of the novel just put by, because this
is how it works with me sometimes—another's paragraphs turn like a
smooth key in the rusting lock of my creating brain. |
Saturday, November 19, 2005|
WHAT WE'RE DOING ALL DAY TODAY... And probably tomorrow and the day after that. New shelving. Chaos. All the books out and then back again:   I've planned a walkabout for morning tomorrow, though. I'll bring some pictures back with me. Feral's been feeling a little claustrophobic since all this store business got started. 3:21:10 PM comment [] trackback []
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Friday, November 18, 2005
NEW BOOK, CAPTIVATING IDEA:
THE
INVENTED CAMERA, published by Freedom Voices, San Francisco, 96
pages, color and b/w hardbound
"Repurposing a (usually) manufactured object aligns Babcock on the one
hand, with Warhol and his Brillo boxes [sigma] but, in contrast to the Pop
master, Babcock reintroduces his creations to the world as a new kind
of functional object - a representation that now makes
representations." (from the essay by Douglas R. Nickel, director for
the Center for Creative Photography)
"Resolutely low-tech but conceptually adroit, the images he produces
have a raw, antique, sometimes 'terrible' beauty." (from the
introduction by Bill Berkson, poet, art critic, teacher,
curator)
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 SCIENCE NOTES:Loss of Fear Factor Makes Timid Mouse Bold For the full story, go to http://www.hhmi.org//news/kandel20051118.html 12:41:10 PM comment [] trackback []
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Thursday, November 17, 2005
 R.I.P. Vine Deloria. I
have only just learned of this. Again, peace to you.10:11:44 PM comment [] trackback []
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Post-opening depression. But not really. Just a great descending ahhhhhhh..., and a slowness, wandering quietly around the quiet shop, straightening, dusting, sitting at the desk, still, gazing out the windows, watching frost melt back off Modoc Street as the day brightens. Another clear warm one. I'll continue with stencil-cutting today. Jesse will drive in soon, I hope, and spend some time here before leaving for Chico to return the borrowed car. It has been such a beautiful time with my son. I'm so happy he could make it happen. I wish he could be here all the time. He knows far more about these books than I do. In the photo below, see the flowers on the desk where Jesse's working? Those are from smallponderings Mark. Their arrival by courier yesterday marked the high point of my opening, and I thank him so much.
My move to town has been pushed back to January 1. I hope the road out is dry and clear that day. |
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SON JESSE ON OPENING DAY... Taking time off from his job pricing books in a used book store to come here and price books in a used book store.
Door logo detail:
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Wednesday, November 16, 2005|
OK, folks. How weird is this: my son Jesse actually did come up to visit—yesterday evening—and as I opened up the shop this morning he took a stroll down Main Street. And bumped into some folks he thought were a couple of out-of-town yuppie tourists with cameras. And he very considerately directed them across the way to the grand opening of Golden Egg Books. And so they stopped in. And they were reporters for the Los Angeles Times, up here for a story about Modoc County (why do people move here? what do they do once they get here?, etc.)—because it's the last county in California where median home prices are less than $100,000. The woman reporter interviewed me in depth for half an hour and said she owed my son a finder's fee. Her photographer companion said he would be back to take pictures in the afternoon, when the light is better. I may well be edited out of their article. Who knows? But that full moon of November. This was the right day to open. And they walked out, and I'd forgotten to tell them about feral. How dumb was that? 12:01:47 PM comment [] trackback []
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ON THE WAY HOME, FROST MOON 2005  9:45:59 AM comment [] trackback []
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Tuesday, November 15, 2005|
This is the third time I've restarted the laptop tonight. I couldn't sleep last night either. It's the double-whammy: (1) the midday coffee to make up for sleep missed the night before, and (2) I ran out of tofu several days ago—my own version of HRT. And now triple-whammy: I'm not close to being ready for the Big Day. I ought not to have lingered abed this morning, and yet I do not regret having done so. I could not have known I would spend all my shop time today greeting friends and customers and moving in new shelves. PJ gave us six 3-foot-wide, 8-foot-tall shelves—18 wall feet of floor-to-ceiling shelving. And you know, it never occurred to me that my ceilings might be 7-foot-10. We will fix this. A couple of inches off the bottom, please... And some little magics: Just as we wondered how we would transport the shelves, my old friend Brian C. from over the mountain stopped by to visit in his pickup truck. Just as I was telling PJ about the barcode reader I hoped to get, Jesse informed me by phone that he was bringing me a special gift when he drives up tomorrow—a barcode reader. Mirabile dictu. But then, of course, the two steps back: the shop is too short to accommodate the shelves; Jesse phones to say the car he'd arranged to borrow has broken down and he can't come after all. The latter, a stinging disappointment. Bitterer every time. Miserabile dictu. And no painting has been done. And no books priced. And Wednesday is nigh. And I have many cow cookies to bake tomorrow night for Grand Opening day. And the clock ticks. And the caffeine recirculates. And the mind races. The moon was spectacular tonight. When I rode back with Brian C. and the second truckload of shelves, the moon had just crested the great gray flatiron of cloud that lay on the Warners, the big fat full full moon. And I didn't know its name this time. I learn now that it's the Beaver Moon, boys and girls, no giggling back there, and that's a little magic, too, because as I was flipping back through the archives this morning I stumbled on that photo I snapped of the flood-muddied beaver last spring. And this evening I threw together a pizza for PJ and we ate it in my chilly little sitting room, she perched on the very edge of the sofa I didn't realize was hairy, too, I'd forgotten to cover it, and didn't wear the right glasses to notice, and we waited for the little woodstove fire to warm us, but that never happened. Afterward I walked with her back to her little house down the way, with flashlight and dogs, and the moon was straight up and all ice, and enclosed in an icy caul, and I said it would likely be so very cold tonight, and that's another name for November full moon—the Frosty Moon. And it's the same moon again every month. It just tries on different monikers. Its noms de plume, de guerre, de theatre.
OK now, now see? I've written myself to sleep... |
Monday, November 14, 2005|
TIME OUT The window's open a crack. I hear magpies complaining to each other. Maybe about the weather. We phoned it in this morning. We aren't budging for a while. It's Monday. The shop is closed today, anyway. We'll go in at noon. You can do all the painting you need to do in four hours. This feels good, lingering with creatures, even the everpresent housefly. The world around us is sodden and dead. Leaden sky. PJ stopped in with her morning coffee around 8:30. I sat in my pajamas, munched my breakfast toast and gulped my honeyed tea and blinked at her, too punchy even to feel embarrassed about the hairy state of my long-unvacuumed living quarters. She's brought such excitement with her from the big city. It was fun to listen to all her plans for when she retires and comes here to stay. Her long-vacant house across the way is a chaos of dust, blown dirt, and rodent droppings. Too much to face first thing the first morning. It was nice to have a neighbor visit. I have not the heart to tell her yet that we will move to town next month. Ah. A glimmer of yellow light from the east. A break in the cover. Bless me. The room suddenly blindingly bright, then fading by degrees—bright-fade-bright. A rhythm of light. Something stronger is called for, and so I suppose I'll decoct some strong coffee in a little while. So much to clean here, so much to catch up. But first a zone to explore, soundtracked by Greta's purrs and the housefly buzz and the muttering magpies, to a rhythm of sunshine. 10:13:55 AM comment [] trackback []
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NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH Probably not the best bedtime reading. But I was looking through the Fall 2005 Tricycle magazine and found an article on these exhibits—http://www.bodyworlds.com/ and http://www.theuniversewithin.org/. I am a little shaken, not stirred. I will have to think this over. What do you think? 12:36:40 AM comment [] trackback []
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Sunday, November 13, 2005|
Here we are in the little bedroom, set for the night. Sally, ever vigilant, lies in the doorway, an old marrow bone between her paws. Greta's a tortoiseshell coil at my left elbow. Apple can't settle, can't decide which disturbs her more—my proximity to the cat or Sally's smug possession of that bone. Neurosis, thy name is Apple. Brian sleeps across the hall. He had an exciting afternoon. We both did: PJ, the woman who owns the property adjoining this one, has driven up from Los Angeles and brought us presents! She walked into the shop this afternoon and presented Golden Egg Books with a shiny gleamy brand-new coffeemaker, and many little bags of Ethiopian coffee, and a set of the most beautiful gilded cups and saucers! She gave me an elegant fringed cotton throw, and brother Brian a sweatshirt from the Academy Awards that has metallic golden Oscars on it. Brian adores awards ceremonies, especially the Academy Awards. He couldn't stop talking about his new shirt all evening. I did little at the shop today besides rearrange kids' books, but I did paint the snake'n'egg logo on the door glass. Tomorrow I'll give it another coat. It's cute, actually, but I hope it doesn't generate concern among my new friends at the Truth Tabernacle. Today was drizzly and dark. Downtown seemed deserted but when I walked into Antonio's Italian Restaurant on Main Street, I found it crowded to the rafters with apres-church diners. The corner antique store appeared to be well-populated, as well. These folks just don't know about the Egg yet, I'm sure. I hope the weather clears. I need a chance to slap some paint on the exterior to wake it up! and make it known that we are alive.... I spent some time trying to find out how to start a small natural foods store. I want to be ready to leap should space become available on either side of my storefront someday. But I couldn't find information online. I know further regulations and licenses are involved. But what is Step One, I wonder? My much-vaunted Faith in the Universe was dealt a severe blow this afternoon. I had entered a Garden Club raffle to win 1-1/2 cords of split dry juniper firewood. I was absolutely certain one of my six-tickets-for-five-dollars would be drawn from that coffee can. Alas, the phone call came. It wasn't just that we'd lost. That I'd understand. But the Garden Club hadn't even known about the coffee can my tickets were in, and hadn't collected it, and so I wasn't even included in the drawing! They apologized and are mailing me back my five dollars. Good for them. Silly me, anyway.
Brian goes on a field trip to Burney again tomorrow for a movie with
his day-program pals. I wish they didn't spend so many hours a week
just riding all over Northern California in that little blue bus. It
can't be good. But he'll have fun, I'm sure. Me, I'm just gonna keep
moving that paintbrush around... |
Saturday, November 12, 2005|
I learn only now of the death today of the English writer John Fowles. His novels held me spellbound through the 1980s, and he was one of few contemporary novelists I read religiously then. If you are registered with the NYTimes, you'll find an article here. 11:27:41 PM comment [] trackback []
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DEAR FOLKS With apologies to Mark at smallponderings, I herewith submit in place of a blog update a paste of copied email I sent to him tonight. I'm living a little in the twilight zone these days, just a bit zombified. This is a Good Thing. Acquiring a skill at living in the Now and dealing with what's in front of me at any given moment. I still indulge in sessions of Worry, but these are being replaced more and more, I find, with bouts of Planning.
Dearest Mark BrotherBoyd 10:09:44 PM comment [] trackback []
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Which Action Hero Would You Be?
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not wide awake at 3 a.m. but merely awake not wakeful so much as conscious these things happen I keep wondering what has happened to the girl who used to live in this body well, not this body, but the one it was when she lived in it as though she'd calved away like a glacier of turquoise and left it a strange shape inhabited by a fragment the eyes flutter shut the eyes have it then back to the twilit village I live in when the body evicts me—get out can't you see I need some sleep? 4:17:00 AM comment [] trackback []
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Friday, November 11, 2005|
Interesting phenomenon. It's too early to announce a pattern, of course, but to date the best days here in the shop also have been the gloomiest in terms of weather. Bright days—not soul in sight, not a sale to record. Fog, freezing temps, gray—and the stream of bookshoppers doesn't quit. This bodes well for winter, I think. Today I saw my first repeat customers, and my first very Christian family. The little girl was thrilled to buy her first Holy Bible with her own money, and Dad bought Dr. Laura's commentary on the ten commandments. No one seemed to mind that I've placed that section next to Occult/Wicca...
The best part of every day is that each person who walks through the door for the first time almost always says, "It's so exciting to finally have a book store here to go to!" |
Last update: 11/29/05; 7:34:09 PM .
