Bookstore? What bookstore?

Ever have one of THOSE weeks?

This week, returning from Istanbul and diving into wrapping up the semester at the college, I have logged less than three hours working in the bookstore. My loving spouse has been carrying the place solo as I careen from car to class to meeting to car, stopping only to fling my body horizontal in a darkened room for five hours at a time.

Yeah, it’s a first world problem. I’m playing catchup partly because I got to spend twelve days meandering the streets of Old and New Istanbul, hand in hand with my beloved. And when we got home, shopsitters Mark and Sally had left the place immaculate and organized.

That was Monday…. by Tuesday evening 12 big boxes of trade-ins sat on our bookshop floor. Clearly, some customers had been waiting for us to return.

My amazing husband was on his hands and knees in the back of the store last night, triaging the last of the paperbacks. I patted him on the shoulder as I raced past. Modern marriages are wonderful things.

And yet, in the midst of the chaos, beneath the burden of all that must  be done, there is a weight that doesn’t so much push down as hold up.

Wednesday past, as I turned out the light much later than I wanted to in preparation for climbing the stairs to bed, I stood for a few moments in our dark, calm bookstore. The walls were lined with books, silent sentinels of so many lives. Testimony that many had gone before, and survived, thrived, even recorded their journeys.

And I breathed. That smell, that lovely smell of dust and ideas–and lemon scent; our cleaner Heather is amazing–worked its way into my rapid-fire lungs. And I slowed down a little.

Just for three minutes, I stood, breathing. Just breathing. This too shall pass, this present cloud of bustle. Busy ends of the semester will return to summer beach readers and long, leisurely glasses of iced tea–or cups of hot tea–with customers who are friends, stopping by to ask about titles, offer reviews, show us their child’s report card.

It’s a good thing to have the weight of books in one’s life. Then I climbed the stairs to the bedroom, where on the left side of the bed a lump lay. The other anchor to my life, Jack, snored softly. Just breathing.

Fast food, furious grading, fast driving, faster meetings and all, I have the most wonderful life.

Box Store?

Jack’s regular Wednesday guest post examines his guilty conscience -

One of the areas of contention between Wendy and me regarding the bookstore is the thorny issue of ‘tidiness’ and cleanliness. To explain further – I favor the Aladdin’s Cave model of used bookstore, while Wendy would rather everyone be able to find any book easily through rigorous alphabetizing and categorizing. In addition, I have no sense of smell, so tracking down elusive cat pee is next to impossible for me.

I’m not oblivious to the delights of a clean and tidy store and I do get a satisfying feeling when it gives out that general ambience. I’d even admit to really appreciating visits to other bookstores that achieve that kind of slick well organized look. So, what to do?

The cleanliness and cat-pee problem is ably dealt with by our ‘wonder-woman’ Heather every Monday and even I appreciate the difference after she is finished.

However our other big problem is not having anywhere to easily store large donations of books when they appear by the box-load. A couple of bags is one thing, but eight or ten large boxes is something else and we can’t let them clutter up floor space. Sorting out the acceptable from the non-acceptable usually results in at least a couple of boxes of ‘throwaways’ and they need to go somewhere – at least temporarily. Up to now that has been the garage, but that has now been taken over by (horrors) a car!

MidGe in the garage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the point -

Two of our good friends, (mother and son), who are regular attenders at our various evening events, brought us ten large boxes of books just the other night. Another gripe – books are heavy, so shifting large boxes is back-breaking work. Luckily their taste in reading is eclectic so at least the collection can be spread pretty evenly throughout the store. While the needlework gang were busy setting the world to rights last night I made a start and, sure enough, out of the ten boxes I rapidly identified two boxes worth of ‘throwaways’ (actually three liftable boxes).

We absolutely hate throwing away books and will even turn them into planters or hand-bags and purses to avoid that terrible fate, but sometimes it just has to be done (I think the reason the garage filled up with books is for just that reason).

Today is garbage day and I have a heavy heart – not only because the erstwhile contents of the garage wait at the curbside, but there are three boxes sitting forlornly waiting the same fate.

Mea Culpa!

Don’t Look a Gift Potato in the Eye

I was gardening out front of the shop when one of our favorite customers pulled up.

“H’lo, dear!” Ms. X waved a hank of fuzzy cloth. “I was yard sale-ing and found this jacket and said, ‘This looks like Wendy.’”

Hence the favorite thing. Not only does she do nice stuff like this all the time, she’s always right. I liked the pretty jacket instantly. Cost her 50 cents, which she did not want back.

Ms. X is one of many people around here who takes life by the horns that tried to gore her, and headbutts it. She and her son, both chronically ill, have no insurance; he has a crappy job. They live carefully in a house that labels them legally homeless, frugal to a fault with secondhand sales, day old baked goods, and the daily, considered creativity of what’s for supper. They don’t fish or garden for fun. But they have fun fishing and gardening.

“They’s sweet potatoes in Appalachia,” Ms. X winked as she departed, a couple of value paperbacks under one arm.

That’s not some mysterious Southern code. About every six months, in a little town two miles over, some person or persons unknown dumps produce under an abandoned gas station’s awning. Word of mouth goes out, and those as want it, go get it. Often it’s sweet potatoes, sometimes bananas. (When that happens, banana bread becomes currency and Huddle House runs a month-long “banana breakfast biscuit” special.) Rumor says once “the dump” was Hershey bars.

I’d never availed myself of “the dump” before but my friend Elissa’s dogs LOVE sweet potato treats. Knowing she was busy helping another friend run a yard sale, in a fit of mischievous humor I grabbed a tea cozy, the back scratcher we use to turn off the kitchen light, and a role of tp. Racing to the sale field, I leaped from my car and shouted to Elissa, “QUICK, GET IN! I’LL EXPLAIN AS WE DRIVE!”

I probably should have remembered that Elissa is a news photographer. While everyone else stared, dumbfounded, with a swift flick of the wrist she held up her cell phone and snapped. And now I’m a meme on the Internet.

At the dump we got two bags for Elissa’s rescue dachshunds–who will waddle through this week in plump yam repleteness–and a bag each for friends we knew were busy. I asked Elissa, born and raised here, about the dump’s origins and she said rumor suggested some wealthy individual who’d made good elsewhere did it for his hometown. No one knows who, or why. And no one really questions. Why look a gift potato in the eye?

I imagine sweet Ms. X and her son sitting down to buttered baked yams, she saying, “…and for breakfast tomorrow there’ll be fresh sweet potato muffins.” On the counter sits a steaming potato casserole she’ll be taking to the church social.

Go by, mad world.

Reading People

Arabic is read from right to left, European languages left to right. Some Asian languages read in columns, while others are like pictographs; get all the info, then go back and build the meaning of the sentence (sort of like German, when you have wait on the verb).

With many ways to read books, can it be a surprise that there are even more ways to read people?

Sam (Samet) worked at our hotel in Istanbul; he used the book analogy when we had a lengthy conversation about the hospitality industry, its economic engine and the subtle nuances of human relations that meant the curtain between “you paid me to be a servant to you” and “how are you enjoying your stay” had to stay down–no matter what accents, expectations, or accidents.

“It is like, every person who comes in this hotel is a book, and you must read them, but not all the lines. They have a whole life elsewhere, but here they want maybe something similar, maybe something different. You have to read very specific lines, look for the messages that are important, and not be distracted by the rest,” he said–in amazing English.

(Sam’s a smart kid, age 25. He’s also tall and movie-star handsome with curly hair, so you can just imagine what the population of wealthy retired world-traveling women who frequent his hotel offered him to read. Jack and I got a real kick out of watching him in action.)

His insights were echoed by Mustafa (43), the carpet seller across the street who willingly spent hours with us recording interviews. From the outlying provinces, “Moos” had been in Istanbul only 18 months. “I was born on a carpet. My mother made them, my father sold them wholesale. My brothers and sisters and I, everything we knew was carpets.”

It became evident as we talked that Mustafa regretted for himself the university education he intends his son to achieve, but also that he and his cousin (and business partner) relished being “cultural ambassadors. We teach the Middle East. We know carpets, how they made, the dyes, who is making them. We teach people every day, we are not just taking money. But we must have money or the shop closes.”

Behind this, Mustafa and Ahmed actually relished discerning who was inside the customer standing before them, what he or she wanted from the whole experience of buying a carpet. “Some people rich. They want a carpet only to prove they rich. They don’t touch, just ‘what is most expensive? OK, that one.’ Some people see a color, they fall in love, some people you talk into buying, some people you can never talk into buying. It is half work, half fun, this talking.”

Selling books, Jack and I read the customers who present themselves, trying to get them right. Back to front, straightforward, any hidden messages? It seems that, in every country, no matter the product, reading people is what makes a good shopkeeper. So Jack and I traveled 5,000 miles to find mirror images of our daily life in the people we met and the work they did.

We kinda like that.

Friends or strangers?

Jack’s Wednesday guest blog returns -

Now that there is some time and distance between us and our Istanbul jaunt, we’re beginning to analyze our experiences. Although we greatly enjoyed many things there were a few bumps along the road as well and that’s what I’ve been thinking about.

Coming from a very small town to spend 12 days in one of the biggest cities in the world was always going to be a bit of a shock to the system and there’s no doubt that was a contributory factor, however there’s something else at play, I think. As tourists staying in a busy up-market hotel in the middle of a historic part of Istanbul surrounded by tourist oriented shops we were very conscious of being just part of a ‘passing trade’ and easily categorized as ‘rich pickings’. However we didn’t consider ourselves so easily pigeon-holed. We are ourselves shop-keepers who deal daily with customers (some of whom are tourists) and we like to think we treat them all as individuals and interesting people in their own right.

All of this got me thinking about the times we felt most comfortable during our Turkish adventure. Not surprisingly it was when we felt we were interacting with people as fellow human beings, talking about shared concerns. Mustafa the carpet seller in his shop across the street from our hotel; Okay and Samet who worked in our hotel; the manager of the tour office at Ephesus; the yarn shop owner who invited us in for tea after we’d bought from him and it didn’t matter anymore. Mustafa chatted happily with us about his family, hometown and world travels; Okay laughed when we named the local cats we’d photographed after hotel employees and took our concerns on board when we were fleeced by a restaurant; Samet talked of his ambition to study Sociology in the US; the office manager went from bland indifference when we arrived in the morning to real genuine concern when Wendy arrived back in the afternoon feeling unwell. It must be very hard to relate to strangers who cross your path fleetingly as customers when you are so dependent on them and very tempting to see them as ‘cash-cows’ to be milked and then forgotten about.

Maybe it’s because we live above the shop and the line between our personal lives and our business lives is fairly blurred, or maybe it’s because in a small town many of our customers are also personal friends, but we really appreciated those times when we seemed to emerge from the masses and be recognized as ourselves in the frenetic surroundings of Istanbul.

In the end these are the memories that will outweigh the blips – the counterfeit 100 Lira bill, the wayward hand in Wendy’s pocket in the Grand Bazaar, the heaving crowds and bizarre fashion show at Ephesus and the missed briefing when we arrived at the hotel – they will recede while the good bits remain.

It was Wendy’s Idea

Wendy says it was my idea.  I’m sure it was hers.

Well, anyway, I guess I should introduce myself.  I am her ER doc friend, Elizabeth, and I live in a fabulous, mid 20th century house in a suburb of Big Stone Gap (aka a rural area of Lee County).  So, Wendy occasionally does writing workshops.  And ONE of us suggested that my place would be IDEAL for such an activity. *coughWendycough*

When we moved into this house, the woman who built it had just died and her children were selling it.  Some things had been redecorated, but mostly not.  It still had the original drapes in the living room, the original flocked wallpaper in the entry hall.  It has a white bath, a pink bath and a green half-bath.  It has steel cabinets in the kitchen.  It has a ceiling light in the breakfast area that looks to me like something Jane Jetson would wear on her head!

It is surrounded by several hundred acres of cow pasture and hayfields.  There is a small community behind my 5 acres, with modest homes and double wide trailers, whose inhabitants come out of the woodwork on their ATVs with the first hint of pretty weather. (Our road is gravel, so not much actual traffic!)

The garden was started by Frona, 60 years ago.  She planned the layout and planted the perennials.  Every year is a journey of discovery with new flowers that must have been dormant in the previous years and with the plants I have added.

So, if you are interested in writing, Wendy is ready to mentor you at this workshop.  There are beds and sofas for you to sleep on and we are excited about sharing our little corner of Eden with you.

You can contact us through the Tales of the Lonesome Pine Bookstore Facebook page for more information.  You can see pictures of my place on my Facebook page, Elizabeth Cooperstein, in Big Stone Gap, VA.

Light a Single Candle

Jack and I sat down at a sidewalk cafe in Istanbul. They didn’t show us prices beforehand, and immediately wanted our order from the pictorial menu. Prices were listed in the back by Turkish names; matching the dish from the picture to the list was confusing. The waiter made suggestions, hovering at my shoulder. We felt guilty about taking so long.

After he told us what to order, and I said twice we wanted the small portion, suspicion began that we were in a ripoff joint, intended to confuse. Small portions would be billed as large, extra sauces added. But we’d ordered. It seemed indecent to walk out.

Next to us, a couple who’d had a plate of salad each were charged 140 lira—about $80. We watched them argue with the head waiter. Ugly British, the man projected, stiffing us poor working Turks.

Jack and I asked for our bill: 105 lira ($65). We’d been had. But we’d eaten; it seemed indecent to walk out. We paid, taking the extra food with us to feed the neighborhood cats, as we’d been doing with leftovers each day.

Caveat emptor. I’ve spent more than $65 on stupidity before. What makes my blood boil is that the men running the Borak Sarayi have correctly assumed that most people in the world want to behave honorably, and are banking—literally—on that decency.

That is a horrible thing. William Butler Yeats wrote a poem called “Second Coming,” which says “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” What if there is no center – no point at which people say, “I will treat you as I want to be treated” (a rule taught by all eight of the world’s largest religions). What if decent people are bilked precisely because they are decent?

Lighten up, Wendy, you say; not everyone wants to take everyone all the time.

Therein lies the problem: Jack and I are trusting people. The more we find places like Borak Serayi, the more we ask pointed questions, request certificates, eschew generosity of spirit in favor of self-protection. Cheerful “hi ho” innocents made cynics, we become what we fear: sharp, mistrustful, get before being gotten types. I don’t want to walk through life believing everyone who tries to hug me will have a knife ready to plunge into my back.

A heartbreaking question, don’t you think: When does suspicion become responsibility?

It’s not just the tourist thing. We once bought a truck from an internal listserve at the college where I adjunct. The vehicle required $3000 in repairs a week after purchase, so I asked on the listserve if anyone else had had troubles with the seller. Several people emailed privately about their poor reputation—yet when the truck ad appeared, no one had said anything. At first I wondered why, but within an hour of asking my question, a woman chastised me to “remain positive” because so many people saw the listserve; she worked for the seller’s relative. And the seller told us his lawyer would sue unless we apologized. When Jack and I spoke to two lawyers—both trusted friends—they advised us that tangling with people known to be corrupt was more dangerous than pointless, that the seller would use expensive legal procedures to overwhelm us.

How does one stop darkness? Turn on lights; exposure plus hope. It is better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the darkness.

Sure, people in Turkey sometimes take the Golden Rule off the table for non-Turks. Americans don’t always apply it to those from other churches. Iraqis (among others) dropped it for the Kurds. Once, not so very long ago, people in Germany took the Golden Rule off the table for people who weren’t blond; we all know how that turned out.

Things fall apart, brick by decent, honest, human brick. The center cannot hold. By myself, I cannot stop human predators; I can only swear as someone who honors God never to join them in treating anyone like cattle to be milked and butchered.

Is this strong enough to keep Yeats “Second Coming” from being prophecy, to stop the thing slouching toward Bethlehem from being born? Perhaps not, but those who light candles can at least keep the darkness from cursing our own hearts.