Reading on the road

As seems typical with a traveling bookstore tour, we end up reading various books while on the road. I had started the tour reading Jodi Picoult’s Spark of Light. But then one gig in, someone bought it as I had laid it down on the table while helping a customer. So I began The Buried Giant, an intense fantasy novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It immediately drew me in and I actually got a third through before it was packed up with the other books and it took a few days before I could locate it again.

In the meantime, I started Bewilderment by Richard Powers after a recommendation by a customer. Oh my. This is the sort of book I should not be reading while working the bookstore. I would pick it up between customers and immediately become absorbed. Yvetta took a photo of me reading while set up at the Root Cafe in Little Rock. I didn’t even realize she was taking the photo until she showed it to me later. Yes, even sitting in a parking lot next to a very lively cafe, while supposedly tending the bookstore, I can become one with a book. I now keep that book with my suitcase, limiting myself to reading it in the evening.

This is what happens when one is surrounded by wonderful books calling out to be read. And in a setting where keeping track of the book one is reading is not always easy (or desirable). Even Yvetta has fallen prey to having various books going at once. She began the tour reading The Hungarian Who Walked to Heaven: Alexander Csoma De Koros by Edward Fox. This is a small and incredible gem, hard to even find these days for a reasonable price (I sincerely wish someone would re-print it). The true story of a man who walked from Hungary/Romania to the border of India and Tibet searching out the origins of the Magyar language. If you ever come across this book, don’t hesitate for a minute to get it. Then as we were sourcing books at a thrift store, Yvetta found the young adult book, I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda, which seemed to call her name. Being more organized than I am around books, Yvetta did keep I Will Always Write Back in her bag along with The Hungarian Who Walked to Heaven so neither was snatched up by customers or shuffled into boxes with other books, and she reads them at appropriate times. I am amazed by her ability to know exactly where her books are everyday and not get engrossed in these books when we set up.

But then she chanced upon Entrepreneur Extraordinary: The Biography of Tomas Bata by Anthony Cekota. Tomas Bata has a fascinating story. I am patiently waiting for Yvetta to finish that book so I can start it. I’ve had the good fortune to visit Zlin in the Czech Republic, to tour the Zlin Museum of Shoemaking and learn something about Bata’s life. And I will mention another Czech author we carried briefly on this tour, Petr Sis. We had his delightful children’s book, Madlenka. All of Sis’s books are a joy to read and to look at with his beautiful illustrations. Hopefully more will pass through the traveling bookstore in tours to come.

This tour, the American Heartland Tour 2023, is nearly over. We have three more stops in Sheridan WY, White Sulphur Springs MT and Libby MT before reaching home. It has been a wonderful experience despite various bumps along the way. But the people – all those who graciously hosted us and then the customers who make a bookstore tour possible – have been a delight. It is an experience that renews one’s faith in humanity. And the places! I wish that you too find a way to explore this country, stopping along the way for conversations, to hear individuals’ stories, and to eat at places like Rosie’s Diner.

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Two roads converge

Over the past few days, two things came together, but how will I know if they would also come together for you? Perhaps a way to begin is to explain I picked up a book from the library, and I attended a county health board meeting. The book is Maryanne Wolf‘s Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World. So many ideas to think about and enjoy in reading this volume which barely holds two hundred pages. It is engagingly dense with ideas and sources that expand in so many directions I hardly know how to hold it all in my head. Half way through, I decided I wanted to start again, at the beginning, and perhaps convince a friend or two, or maybe our local book club to give it a try so there is someone(s) to discuss this book with me.

The same day I picked the book up from the library, I went to the monthly county health board meeting. In a rural county in northwest Montana, it’s a board composed of seven community volunteers who serve “to prevent disease and illness, ensure a healthy environment and promote healthy choices by setting county-wide policies to protect the health of county residents.” One might think that although this board had been sorely tested with Covid, that in general the board would meet monthly to make decisions on air quality, animal control and solid waste disposal. And yes, these topics are on their list of responsibilities but Covid and other issues over the last three or four years forced the board to deal with politicized topics such as vaccines, masks and quarantines.

Do you attend public health board meetings? As I haven’t been to health board meetings in other places, I don’t know if the one here is typical. At last evening’s meeting, there were thirtysome people attending to give public comment on whether the county should have a pandemic influenza plan and if so, what details that plan would contain (a note that during the meeting the terms influenza and Covid were often used interchangeably by some people). Most of the people on the public side of the table strongly voiced their opinion that we didn’t need a pandemic plan and if there was a plan that contained anything about vaccines or quarantines that they, the people speaking at that time, would not comply. Terms like freedom, civil disobedience, and Constitutional rights were voiced often and loudly. It was the first time I heard the word bio-weapon used to describe a vaccine. It was the first time I understood there were people in my community who saw the county health board as a threat to personal freedoms.

In her book, Wolf describes the process for learning to read. No doubt you’ll agree reading is a very special skill. It is a skill according to Wolf and others in the field, that we have to learn. Reading deeply as Wolf puts it, does all sorts of amazing things to our brain and its development. It is a skill that we can learn, use, and hopefully strengthen over time. Unfortunately it seems from studies that Wolf refers to as well as research done by Sherry Turkle, that the digital age while giving us many useful things, also changes things about who we are. People read less and differently, not only fewer books, but reading less in depth because news, messages, emails, and such are on our screen in shorter snatches of words. Complex ideas, beautiful language and critical thinking seem to be slipping away.

Wolf wrote, “When language and thought atrophy, when complexity wanes and everything becomes more and more the same, we run great risks in society politic – whether from the extremists in a religion or a political organization or, less obviously, from advertisers. Whether cruelly enforced or subtly reinenforced, homogenization in groups, societies, or languages can lead to the elimination of whatever is different or ‘other.’ The protection of diversity within human society is a principle that was embodied in our Constitution and long before that in our genetic cerebrodiversity. As described by geneticists, futurists, and most recently Toni Morrison in her book The Origin of Others, diversity enhances the advancement of our species’ development, the quality of our life on our connected planet, and even our survival.”

As a bookstore owner, I encourage people to read. Reading books and newspapers gives and requires more from me than surfing the Internet. Often I find myself discussing what I read, thinking about the content, the ideas not just in the nanosecond of reading them but throughout the day, the week. And reading Wolf’s book made me examine my responses during that health board meeting, and of others at that meeting. I did learn things listening to those opposed to the pandemic plan. I also experienced a situation that lacked empathy – in how some individuals interrupted the meeting, how one person actually voiced he did not feel respected by board members, how at times I felt an inner smirk at something said. With very real differences and divides evident in Helena, MT and Washington, DC, at the health board meeting and at a dinner party, don’t we need a modicum of respect, a willingness to listen? Or are these evaporating like people reading books? And how do we act empathically when the current divisions feel so daunting?

Maryanne Wolf: Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

Sherry Turkle: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Sherry Turkle: The Empathy Diaries

Interview with Sherry Turkle

Toni Morrsion: The Origin of Others

Textual apothecary

As a traveling bookstore owner/driver, the books I read come to me in a variety of ways. There are those recommended by readers. Often I jot down titles and if I don’t have a copy in the bookstore, order it through interlibrary loan. Sometimes I read a book review that is so compelling I try to order the title through the library, but if it is too new and the library doesn’t have it available yet, then I find another independent bookstore to buy it from. And sometimes on longer traveling bookstore adventures, I just pull a book off the shelf that looks interesting and read that. That’s what happened this weekend while at the Yaak music festival. As I sank into the first chapter, it almost felt too coincidental that I randomly selected that particular book at this particular time.

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada is a novel based on a slice of German history from World War II. In the early 1940s, Elise and Otto Hampel, a working class, middle-aged couple, began committing acts of civil disobedience against the Nazi regime. They wrote postcards that they then left in public places for others to find. The postcards had short messages denouncing Hitler and urging people to take action. The Hampels were eventually arrested, tried and executed. In 1945, Hans Fallada was given the Gestapo files on Otto and Elsie Hampel as part of a Soviet post-war decision to create an antifascist cultural movement. Fallada, a talented German author who had struggled in Germany during the war, was asked to write something based on the lives of the Hampels. He wrote this novel.

It is a compelling story. Reading it during the summer of 2021 gives perspective to what many of us experience now in areas of the country that have become polarized. It raises questions about what we each do during troubled times. The Hampels wrote over two hundred postcards. Most individuals who found one of those cards quickly turned it over to the Gestapo out of fear. Fallada does well describing how fear was established and used by the political regime at that time. This resonated with me as so many individuals I talk with about going to public meetings, speaking out, canvassing tell me they can’t because they are afraid. The Hampels’ resistance came from their determination to not let fear stop them from being true to their beliefs, to act even against overwhelming odds. Fallada captures the Hampels’ moral integrity, their effort to remain decent, their need to do something they hoped would make a difference.

Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

The Optician of Lampedusa by Emma Jane Kirby

Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

Unearthing Seeds of Fire: The ideas of Highlander by Frank Adams

Hands

I assume we all are multi-tasking at a new level these days physically, emotionally, economically. A parent tries to work while supervising children who are learning at home. How many people weigh a job that puts them at risk against inadequate unemployment benefits? Individuals strive to shelter in place, yet are committed to protesting injustice. Teachers juggle working with students in classrooms and students online. We are urged to be kind and to breathe deeply during these wild times of a pandemic and political turmoil. Yet we know we can’t be silent, we must do more than smile. We need to step up. We need to lend a hand.

Two books of photographs came through my house on their way to the traveling bookstore. One features photos mainly of hands by Eve Arnold, a book I’ve always admired. We do so much with our hands from holding a baby, to pulling a trigger, fixing an engine to threading a needle, butchering a pig to shaping steel. Arnold’s book is remarkable in all the lives she captures, the depths that are revealed. The other book, Women, features Annie Leibovitz‘s photos accompanied by Susan Sontag‘s words, and yes, both Leibovitz’s images and Sontag’s essay will instantly absorb you.

I am fortunate to have both books in front of me at this moment. The people captured by the photographers’ lens, and the questions posed in Sontag’s essay broaden my experience. And isn’t that what we expect books to do? To take us out of ourselves, to show us a different place, a different existence. To remind us that everything doesn’t necessarily start and stop with my individual life. Rather each of us is intertwined with so many others in a myriad of ways. Through books, we can glimpse others’ lives, learn of unimagined experiences, our world grows. Hopefully we gain insight. We see the faces of those who mine coal, a man’s fingers picking coffee beans, a woman’s hands sewing garments in a factory. We see the hands of a surgeon and the hands of an addict. Leibovitz gives us women farmers, actors, scholars, athletes, and politicians.

My take away from these books is the strength we each possess. Despite hardships, despite the place we find ourselves in at this moment. The look in the eyes of the miners at the end of their day, the nurse finishing a long shift, the woman weaving. Both books are reminders of humans’ capabilities and determination.

Handbook, Eve Arnold (2004)

Women, Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag (2000)

Balance

In these times, for me, its an attempt to find a balance between feeling productive and taking a breath, between sending love to those who struggle, to all those heroes who are helping as well as to acknowledge the dark, raging turmoil I feel towards those who make this situation worse. Is it possible to read too much when I could be sewing more face masks to give to people? Should I take a device-free day to avoid the news but then what about staying in much needed contact with family and friends? We are urged to make a daily schedule and we are urged to relax, to use this time to be creative and to cut ourselves slack.

Yes, the bookstore storage/garage and the van itself are organized and just waiting for the pall to lift. Jana who was quarantined at my house for two weeks was a big part of that organization. Left on my own now I wander like an easily distracted school kid from an art project to reading to sewing masks to the computer to reading to the computer to fiddle practice to attempting to exercise to…If there was an app tracking my activities, the results would be a Jackson Pollock painting.

My current book pile is similar. A Georgia O’Keefe biography, Charles Portis’ The Dog of the South, essays by Wendell Berry, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, short stories by Brian Doyle, and Rebecca Salter’s Japanese Woodblock Printing. And yes, there are times when I go through that pile and realize none are quite right for the moment and start yet another one. Actually I am not quite sure what would be right for this moment.

Despite uncertainly, fear and anger, there is also amazement at how my community comes together, at individuals creating wonderful art in so many different ways, at people reaching out to others even if that reaching needs to sometimes be done virtually. It makes my heart sing to see colleagues like Raven Books in Kansas and Page 158 Books in North Carolina doing remarkable things to keep books in people’s hands. And I am so appreciative of women in my town who sew face masks better and faster than I will ever manage.

Books in their many manifestations

There are trips with the traveling bookstore. There are trips taken without the bookstore. There are pristine hardback books I handle reverently when visiting other bookstores. There are paperbacks with tears and coffee stains that friends pass on to me. There are artist books that I make and put my heart into. There are artist books that others make which dazzle me. There are old books that have been chewed by mice and some pages crumble when turned but still the owner is loathed to throw them away. There are books bought and read so quickly that the reader can’t even remember reading them. And there are those special books that one reads again and again and again.

There are surprises in books. A used book that when opened contains a letter in smudged pencil someone was using as a bookmark. There are books that come up on the book club list which don’t look the least bit interesting and then turn out to be a favorite. There is a book someone was ready to throw away and when that particular book finds its way to my bookstore, is the exact book the next customer was searching for.

There are books with such amazing photos that words aren’t necessary. There are books with just enough words to push one through the door into another universe (The Invention of Hugo Cabret). And there are books that one can’t touch but still create magic. This was my experience recently when visiting The Broad, a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles, and watching William Kentridge’s Second Hand Reading.

Take the time

Yes tis the season when there aren’t enough hours in the day especially when the days are so short (although now they are starting to get a bit longer). And those of you who are sensible have either all the gifts bought and wrapped or have opted to go gift free this year because after all there is already so much stuff in our lives (will assume you read Marie Kondo’s book last year).

But at this late date in the season I am compelled to suggest a book for you. I rarely suggest books because it can go so many ways. There should be some sort of questionnaire readers complete before asking a bookseller to recommend a book. Otherwise it is a completely wild guess as to what particular book might suit a person’s particular reading needs in that moment.

So a bit unusual for me to recommend a book here, but this one is well written and necessary. In these times of #MeToo and numerous sexual assault and harassment charges against individuals in all walks of life, this book captures an essential essence. The author, Chanel Miller, was the victim in a case that was tried as People v. Turner. Miller was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner. He was found guilty of three counts of felony sexual assault. He served three months in prison. Miller wrote. And wrote. She wrote a letter to the court that went viral. And now she has written the book, Know My Name.

Chanel Miller documents so many aspects of our current culture that are wrong; the alarming number of women who are assaulted, and the physical and financial trauma they face after the assault from our justice system.  The frequent harassment women experience walking down a street, going out for an evening, attending a party.  And how often this harassment is dismissed as boys being boys.

This is a hard book to read because it asks each us to be stronger, to work towards change in the laws, in the system, in our society, in ourselves.  I really want to see this book selling out at bookstores and picked up by book clubs.  Please read it and then pass it on.

 

Bonus

A wondrous morning in Woodstock, IL with the bookstore and that town’s Atrocious Poets set up at Isabel’s Family Restaurant. The last official event on this tour! Driving away from Woodstock that afternoon, it seemed the next set of days would be very long stretches of road with perhaps a few short sporadic conversations if an extrovert happened to sit next to me at a breakfast counter.

Today was a five hundred plus mile drive from Albert Lea, Minnesota to Rapid City, South Dakota. At one point I wanted lunch, hoping to find something better than fast food or a truck stop. Pulled off the interstate at White Lake, South Dakota. A sign indicated a restaurant even though a very small town (population 375). I found the White Lake Cafe and noticed it was ideally situated a few doors down from a post office.

Waiting for my order, I was writing postcards when an elegantly attired older woman came up to my table and asked if that was my van parked out front. I immediately thought I parked illegally but no, she was curious what this traveling bookstore was about. She pulled up a chair, we talked as fast as possible as she needed to go to a meeting soon, and we exchanged addresses. Before she left, I went out to open the bookstore so she could see inside.

Linda Dodds is the town’s librarian with a minuscule budget and a role that involves more than just checking out books and shelving. The library is only open a few days/week but Ms. Dodds puts on events for the community, helps the school which doesn’t have its own librarian, and passionately searches for books to get young people interested in reading. During our brief conversation, she convinced me to attend the South Dakota Festival of Books next year and had me brainstorming YA fiction titles.

As she dashed off, I finished lunch and thought of other communities my bookstore stopped in that shone with a commitment to reading. There was the spectacular public library in Port Orford, Oregon (another small town with a population of 1,148) which found community support to expand when the county system wanted to close it down. And the woman I met in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania who helped with an event that had families reading under the stars in the sports stadium. And all the people who rave to me about their local book clubs! There are a few individuals who grumble about the death of books and that kids don’t read anymore, but on these bookstore travels, I feel very hopeful.

Stopping by

Is there a best bookstore stop? There are so many different ones and so many are surprises. Sturgis, South Dakota was on the trip itinerary but who knew it would turn out to be such a great stop with thought-provoking conversations and delicious food at Jambonz? Or Crete, Illinois. Have you heard of Crete (not the Mediterranean island but the community south of Chicago)? The bookstore set up at Crete Creative Gallery which had a lovely, delicate exhibit by Sherri Denault and a spread of pastries with coffee by the Benton Street Bakery. Women from local clubs who were so well read I felt provincial and artists, photographers and writers stopped by throughout the day.

There was driving the bookstore through twisting golden-forested roads in central Pennsylvania to get to Punxsutawney. I wondered how a town so off the beaten track ended up on the tour. Then I met the sparkling Jeanne Curtis in person who had extended the original invitation. I met her cousins, local librarians, a talented young musician (Samantha Sears), a kid who bought a book about mining for his grandfather, a woman who bought a book about the West for her father, a man who wants to move to Montana to be a fishing guide (please do this, Jason, life is short!), and the man who is one of two official keepers for the groundhogs, Punxsy Phil and Phyllis. I heard about the mines closing and schools consolidating, young people moving away to find work.

In every town there are stories; perhaps it’s a trade where I bring books and individuals give stories – about the grandfather who used to work in a Pennsylvania coal mine, or the mom in Toledo who left her car running as she quickly bought three children’s books. She was on her way to work but wants her kids to grow up reading. Or the woman in Punxsutawney who volunteers for the Parents Teachers Organization and helped put together “Reading Under the Stars” where families gather on a special evening to spread out blankets in the sports stadium and enjoy reading activities. There was the 96 year old woman in Toledo a friend brought to the bookstore. She explained her local library delivers books to her twice a month so she doesn’t need to buy any but she did want to see this traveling bookstore she heard so much about.

Many wondrous individuals. But there are dark moments too. Why do so many women ask if I am afraid to travel alone in this country? The other evening after closing the bookstore, I got a GoFundMe request for a friend with mountains of medical bills. I read a NBC article that the number is now over five thousand children who have been separated from their families at our border. Driving into Maryland from Pennsylvania, I see a Confederate flag.

midsummer

Over coffee this morning jotted down some bookstore thoughts.  Now with a few weeks’ perspective, there is the wonder of my Western States Bookstore Tour and all the great things that came from that – new people, new gig locations, new sights to remember, old friends, revisiting places I had set up before that welcomed me back. For those of you who might consider starting up your own traveling bookstore business, I will caution that 3-4 weeks on the road is exhilarating and exhausting.  So many adventures! Some nail biting, some heart warming.  For now it is a treat to be back in Montana and know that for the rest of the summer I will mostly be peddling books in these parts.

Since returning home, bookstore wonders happen even in Lincoln County, Montana.  The county is large by some standards; has more square miles than Delaware but a population just shy of 20,000 people.  So lots of forests and mountains, rivers and lakes but rather small towns.  Last week with the bookstore at the Eureka farmers market, I started talking with Stella, a young person who obviously loves books.  Turns out she is an avid reader and hopes to become a journalist after college.  But as she is currently twelve years old, still has time to change her mind. She mentioned doing a regular podcast about books.  Definitely appreciate a young person who isn’t shy about her passion and is willing to actualize something she cares about.

A realization that came from having the bookstore at farmers markets – perhaps all those luscious vegetables and fruits at booths near by – was how books are like fertilizer.  They help ideas grow.  They nurture new thoughts.  They strengthen so many things from general knowledge to vocabulary to understanding of cultures.  I suppose having a Textual Apothecary, this thought shouldn’t have surprised me but it did.

A few short notes…

Mission Pie which is a wonderful place in San Fransisco that hosted the bookstore and Type-Ins numerous times will close its doors on September 1.  So very thankful for all they gave the community over the years.

I recently completed a chapbook with Shirley Jacobs and will have limited copies available at the bookstore.

Upcoming bookstore events (although there are bound to be more which will be updated on the bookstore’s Facebook page):

every Wednesday at Eureka Farmers Market 3:30 – 6:30

every Friday at Trego Farmers Market 4:00 – 7:00 (unless scheduled for another event)

July 18 TBC Laughing Dog Brewery, Sandpoint ID

July 19 – 20 Yaak music festival, Yaak MT

August 9 – 10 Riverfront Blues Festival, Libby MT

August 23-25 Lincoln County Fair, Eureka MT

September 14 Kootenai Harvest Festival, Libby MT