aging / bookstore / childrens books / provisional press / reflection / Traveling bookstore

A bushel and a peck

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Thinking about children today as I stuff the lower shelves in the traveling bookstore with picture books and chapter books. I decide how many extra boxes of children’s books I should try to fit in the back storage of the bookstore. I think about an interview I did with Canvas Rebel recently and at one point trying to explain children’s reactions to the traveling bookstore compared to adults’. Although some adults step right into the bookstore, many hesitate as though they need an invitation. Countless times I say (again), “Please go in. It’s a bookstore.” Children typically throw themselves into the bookstore, grab a book and settle down. I think about Ukrainian children who have had their schools bombed. Think about children in Gaza who are hungry, who are maimed, who are without a home, who are dead. And with all this thinking, ponder the role of a traveling bookstore owner.

Recently read Lyn Slater‘s “How to be Old.” In one chapter, she describes her process for starting a blog and over the years, shaping that blog in a way that can be compared to shaping her wardrobe, taking stock of who she is and who she wants to be. What words, what colors, what fabrics convey all of this because obviously, for any of us, it is a lot to convey. And I reflected on my own blog and where it started: May 31, 2015 with a photo of brand spanking new shelves that had just been built, sitting empty, waiting with so much book potential, waiting to cross so many miles. And a bit like Lyn Slater, both the bookstore and I have changed our styles over the past decade. I tried to capture the bookstore’s changes in that Canvas Rebel interview. From the first year driving around the rural county where I live, tentatively asking to set up here or there. And now after setting up in so many places in so many states, feel emboldened to ask just about anyone if I can pull into their parking lot, festival, loading zone, college campus to peddle great used books.

And me? I’ve changed. My hair longer in messy space buns or braids. Shifted from clogs to Merrells. Doing some letterpress printing using a Provisional Press, something I learned about when I set up the bookstore at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art a few years back. And now, when I’m not on the road, I print posters I put up around my town. Had a show recently at the local post office where two were removed after complaints about their words (one about guns, the other about Gaza). I’m speaking up more. I strive to find that balance of speaking my truth and being civil, listening to others while not letting them speak over me.

So yes, the bookstore will be setting up in Missoula at Western Cider in less than two weeks. First gig on a month’s tour. Hope to catch you when I’m on the road.

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