It is not simply a sign of my frugality that the majority of the books in my library were purchased at the Green Valley Book Fair. What was once a small warehouse filled with heavily discounted publisher’s returns and overstock books is now a 25,000 square foot complex just south of Harrisonburg, Virginia. The book fair is only open six times a year, for 2-week periods; when not living in the area, I plan my visits around its schedule. Although it is a bit disheartening to go there as a writer—all those unwanted, and thus unloved books—I am delighted to walk off, once again, with an armload of $3 and $4 books. (Having just muddled through my first self-employment tax return, I also consoled myself that the bill will serve as a tax write-off.)
The titles are eclectic. If readers of Christian fiction aren’t watchful, for example, they might wander into the paranormal romance section, which is housed, however unintentionally, next to those texts that, although short on both content and theology, are buoyed up by misguided piety and the marketing efforts of the Christian publishing industry. You can also pick up a copy of Lolita, or Native Sun, or a Spanish–English dictionary, so it is safe to say that nearly everyone can to achieve literary contentment.
Today was opening day at the book fair, and the aisles were a crush of customers. It is a purely democratic affair, and it is fun to see what others carry about in their shopping baskets—Origin of the Species and a coin-collecting manual for one customer, Going Rouge for another. Two ladies had braved the crowds to buy children’s books and sundry items, presumably for their children or elementary-aged students. Upon entering the adult fiction and reference section, one groaned in distaste. “Oh, these are the reading books,” she said. “That’s not for me.” Her companion concurred, and declared that if she ever was to actually read such books, she’d get a Kindle. “It’s just too much to mess around with book books,” she said, and breezed toward the cash register.
Showing posts with label on holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label on holiday. Show all posts
3/26/2011
1/13/2011
odd jobs: a memory
My summer job in high school was driving combine on a grass seed farm. A grass seed combine harvests the crop by picking up a swath of grass and shaking the seeds loose. While monotonous, it's not a bad way to spend five weeks of summer--I listened to books on tape, watched the sunset six days out of seven, and pulled whatever pranks you can think of when you're bored and in possession of a CB radio. (I also got into country music and talk radio, including the religious stuff, where I learned that even on-air exorcisms have to break for commercials.) In the end, I was rewarded with what my boss thought the ultimate compliment: he told me I'd make an excellent farmer's wife.
Oregon state law requires that anyone under the age of 16 take a tractor safety course before operating farm equipment (that is, unless you are the child--or wife--of a farmer). Thus the first summer of driving combine, I spent three days at Linn Benton Community College, driving farm equipment around the parking lot and watching low-production safety videos. It certainly would have been more entertaining had I managed to talk to the boy who was generally acknowledged to be a local heartthrob, and was inexplicably enrolled in the same course. Instead, we independently endured the hours of videos that admonished viewers to "avoid the drive shaft" and "only wear a seat belt if your equipment has an approved rollover device." In between verses of their theme song, "Highway to the Danger Zone," they showed clips of what happens when loose clothing gets stuck in rotating machinery--at the last second, they'd switch the hapless farmer out for a leaf-filled dummy, which would fly around the spinning rod, spewing multicolored leaves and stuffing. Memorable stuff. For the sake of illustration, here's a similar type of movie.
Oregon state law requires that anyone under the age of 16 take a tractor safety course before operating farm equipment (that is, unless you are the child--or wife--of a farmer). Thus the first summer of driving combine, I spent three days at Linn Benton Community College, driving farm equipment around the parking lot and watching low-production safety videos. It certainly would have been more entertaining had I managed to talk to the boy who was generally acknowledged to be a local heartthrob, and was inexplicably enrolled in the same course. Instead, we independently endured the hours of videos that admonished viewers to "avoid the drive shaft" and "only wear a seat belt if your equipment has an approved rollover device." In between verses of their theme song, "Highway to the Danger Zone," they showed clips of what happens when loose clothing gets stuck in rotating machinery--at the last second, they'd switch the hapless farmer out for a leaf-filled dummy, which would fly around the spinning rod, spewing multicolored leaves and stuffing. Memorable stuff. For the sake of illustration, here's a similar type of movie.
7/05/2010
and the rats of Little Rock
Driving into Little Rock, these are the first things you see: road signs for Little Rock Air Force Base, billboards encrusted in glittering diamonds, advertising engagement rings of the weight that truly signal commitment, or at least 10-year payment plans; and a 1st Pentecostal Church so large it seems to have sucked the 2nd and 3rd churches into it's footprint.
My sister works as a technician at a local research site, where she runs tests on the Ts65Dn mouse, whose 16th chromosome resembles mutations found on the 21st chromosome of an individual with Down Syndrome. The research she assists with has found that what is generally viewed as a lack of work memory in those with Down Syndrome may actually be a delay in learning: The Ts65Dn mice demonstrate an increased ability to execute trials after ongoing and repeated practice.
One of the trials she runs take place in 12 x 12 boxes; the mice are trained to activate one of three NPH (nose-poke holes—perhaps the most delightful acronym I have encountered) after hearing its affiliated tone.
It costs approximately $100 to purchase and train a set of Ts65DN mice. They are housed in a quarantined section of the research site, and fed pellets according to their trial schedule (they’re kept at 80-85 percent of their body weight, in order to incentivize them to complete the trials, which reward them with drops of milk.) My sister pulls out a “mouse pie” from the cupboard, which is a plastic round sectioned into 12 spaces, for moving mice from their cages to the trial boxes. “I just transfer mice, that’s all I do,” says my sister. She prefers working with the rats, who are less inclined to bite and run away, even though both species are the culprit of workplace oddities such as having a tail swung into one's mouth during a transfer.
The Ts65Dn mice are housed in the same room as those undergoing methamphetamine tests. “Why is meth appealing?” asks one of the posters in the lab. “It’s intensely rewarding…for awhile.” The meth mice are underweight and visibly agitated; they gnaw on the metal bars of the cage and look generally crazed. My sister isn’t supposed to publicize the fact that she works on animal trials. Occasionally someone from PETA or another animal rights organization organizes a protest or applies for a job in an attempt to expose what they view as cruel research methods. “Mice have saved more people than #911,” reads a poster in my sister’s office. “They’ve been involved in most every important medical discovery in this century.” (I believe this was referring to the last century.)
Over half a century later, Little Rock Central High School is still as beautiful and formidable as it must have appeared to the Little Rock Nine. Their names are etched in benches surrounding a reflecting pool at the base of the stairs. My mother throws a penny into the water, and all is still except for the broadening ripples. If anything, the most seismic shift is the demographic somersault that occurred between 1950 and today: Little Rock Central lies south of I-630, in that part of the city that everyone has told my sister and her husband to avoid. This is the translation [you have to click on the image; the lighter the color, the greater the white flight]:
And then it was down to Houston, with a slight detour to Gurdon, Arkansas, after the Queen Mary stalled out on the highway, twice. Despite two cell phones and internet service, it took a desperate call to my father to send the tow truck in my direction, all of which was worth it when the tow truck driver climbed out of the cab and told me: “Our guy in the shop talked to your daddy.”
After a 20-minute tow and 5 minutes under the hood, they found the problem: The battery had shaken loose in the heat and southbound highways. “Who put in your battery?” they asked.
That would be my daddy.
My sister works as a technician at a local research site, where she runs tests on the Ts65Dn mouse, whose 16th chromosome resembles mutations found on the 21st chromosome of an individual with Down Syndrome. The research she assists with has found that what is generally viewed as a lack of work memory in those with Down Syndrome may actually be a delay in learning: The Ts65Dn mice demonstrate an increased ability to execute trials after ongoing and repeated practice.
One of the trials she runs take place in 12 x 12 boxes; the mice are trained to activate one of three NPH (nose-poke holes—perhaps the most delightful acronym I have encountered) after hearing its affiliated tone.
It costs approximately $100 to purchase and train a set of Ts65DN mice. They are housed in a quarantined section of the research site, and fed pellets according to their trial schedule (they’re kept at 80-85 percent of their body weight, in order to incentivize them to complete the trials, which reward them with drops of milk.) My sister pulls out a “mouse pie” from the cupboard, which is a plastic round sectioned into 12 spaces, for moving mice from their cages to the trial boxes. “I just transfer mice, that’s all I do,” says my sister. She prefers working with the rats, who are less inclined to bite and run away, even though both species are the culprit of workplace oddities such as having a tail swung into one's mouth during a transfer.
The Ts65Dn mice are housed in the same room as those undergoing methamphetamine tests. “Why is meth appealing?” asks one of the posters in the lab. “It’s intensely rewarding…for awhile.” The meth mice are underweight and visibly agitated; they gnaw on the metal bars of the cage and look generally crazed. My sister isn’t supposed to publicize the fact that she works on animal trials. Occasionally someone from PETA or another animal rights organization organizes a protest or applies for a job in an attempt to expose what they view as cruel research methods. “Mice have saved more people than #911,” reads a poster in my sister’s office. “They’ve been involved in most every important medical discovery in this century.” (I believe this was referring to the last century.)
Over half a century later, Little Rock Central High School is still as beautiful and formidable as it must have appeared to the Little Rock Nine. Their names are etched in benches surrounding a reflecting pool at the base of the stairs. My mother throws a penny into the water, and all is still except for the broadening ripples. If anything, the most seismic shift is the demographic somersault that occurred between 1950 and today: Little Rock Central lies south of I-630, in that part of the city that everyone has told my sister and her husband to avoid. This is the translation [you have to click on the image; the lighter the color, the greater the white flight]:
And then it was down to Houston, with a slight detour to Gurdon, Arkansas, after the Queen Mary stalled out on the highway, twice. Despite two cell phones and internet service, it took a desperate call to my father to send the tow truck in my direction, all of which was worth it when the tow truck driver climbed out of the cab and told me: “Our guy in the shop talked to your daddy.”
After a 20-minute tow and 5 minutes under the hood, they found the problem: The battery had shaken loose in the heat and southbound highways. “Who put in your battery?” they asked.
3/27/2010
in a day
The Roman Empire has not fallen: It merely moved to west Houston. Yes, took the brick walks and the arched piazzas and the rococo gateways and landed with a weighty sigh right off the beltway (the outer beltway, that is). The pansies and wide, sturdy grass are American additions, planted perfectly among freshly spread bark dust, which coats the adjacent air with the heavy, medicinal smell of treated wood. Rome, now, is luxury condominiums and tasteless jewelry stores and thickly sauced entrees. There are fountains—birds and angels and abstract figures, although there are few, if any coins glistening beneath the water. Marquis. Miramar. Empire Lofts. Plantation. These are places people call home. “Sweet home Plantation. Where the skies are so blue,” and, one suspects, the eyes are too.
Few zoning laws in the fourth largest city in the United States will get you this: high-rise apartment towers casting shadows on the arches of infinity billion served, and the woman on the sidewalk with two overweight Chihuahuas. Parking lots—many parking lots, empty but for a figure cutting across their right angles, running through sound waves issuing forth from fake rocks. Roads are unreliable, ending at fences or passing by guarded kiosks. In the service lot behind Aurturo’s restuarant, a man is watering a bed of basil. “You like?” “Si!”
The only sidewalk leading to the hotel ends at a locked door; the front entrance is tucked up against the highway exit ramp, and thus fleet footed folk must hedge the corner carefully to avoid the valets on their way to the garage. The Texas Ski Council SkiBidFest is in full swing, which has something to do with skiing and Texans who love it, and means women in sparkly shirts and suntanned men and all of them clutching glasses of wine and talking about the snow in Park City.
We, meanwhile, are in professional dress and tap tap tap our heels to meeting rooms with names like Topaz and Saphhire and Glass Palace and click click click our way through the day on a wave of endless PowerPoint presentations. Miracles exist: the east wall of Topaz is a sheet of windows. The blinds are only partially drawn, and through them is a highway, and all around shines natural Texas light.
Few zoning laws in the fourth largest city in the United States will get you this: high-rise apartment towers casting shadows on the arches of infinity billion served, and the woman on the sidewalk with two overweight Chihuahuas. Parking lots—many parking lots, empty but for a figure cutting across their right angles, running through sound waves issuing forth from fake rocks. Roads are unreliable, ending at fences or passing by guarded kiosks. In the service lot behind Aurturo’s restuarant, a man is watering a bed of basil. “You like?” “Si!”
The only sidewalk leading to the hotel ends at a locked door; the front entrance is tucked up against the highway exit ramp, and thus fleet footed folk must hedge the corner carefully to avoid the valets on their way to the garage. The Texas Ski Council SkiBidFest is in full swing, which has something to do with skiing and Texans who love it, and means women in sparkly shirts and suntanned men and all of them clutching glasses of wine and talking about the snow in Park City.
We, meanwhile, are in professional dress and tap tap tap our heels to meeting rooms with names like Topaz and Saphhire and Glass Palace and click click click our way through the day on a wave of endless PowerPoint presentations. Miracles exist: the east wall of Topaz is a sheet of windows. The blinds are only partially drawn, and through them is a highway, and all around shines natural Texas light.
9/07/2009
day laborer
in memory of last year's labors...
Konstantinos found me before I found him; that is, his camera lens captured the sky above my profile as I leaned against the Coney Island pier. He was, he told me a few minutes later, testing out the capabilities of his new camera, a Nikon whose exact model now eludes me—an unfortunate fact, since its night-light capability was surprisingly superior for such a small camera. He’d just picked up the camera at a flea shop and he made me guess how much he paid. I overestimated.
I suspect that the $300 camera held some pictures of me; I had watched out the corner of my eye as he captured the Coney Island skyline: the languid Ferris wheel, spooling on its endless spindle, the lights, blinking and burning, the Cyclone as it shrieked and rattled its wooden slats. The lens tilted slightly in my direction, and, while flattered, I wondered at a man, alone, slightly plump, with hair glistening and receding like a coastline, who would take pictures of anonymous women. He smiled and asked me to take his picture.
Konstantinos found me before I found him; that is, his camera lens captured the sky above my profile as I leaned against the Coney Island pier. He was, he told me a few minutes later, testing out the capabilities of his new camera, a Nikon whose exact model now eludes me—an unfortunate fact, since its night-light capability was surprisingly superior for such a small camera. He’d just picked up the camera at a flea shop and he made me guess how much he paid. I overestimated.
I suspect that the $300 camera held some pictures of me; I had watched out the corner of my eye as he captured the Coney Island skyline: the languid Ferris wheel, spooling on its endless spindle, the lights, blinking and burning, the Cyclone as it shrieked and rattled its wooden slats. The lens tilted slightly in my direction, and, while flattered, I wondered at a man, alone, slightly plump, with hair glistening and receding like a coastline, who would take pictures of anonymous women. He smiled and asked me to take his picture.
9/04/2009
heartland
Saint Peter, population 10,000, home to Gustavus Adolphus, a Lutheran college whose salivatory namesake was the king of Sweden at about the same time Shakespeare was jiggling bellies and piercing lovesick hearts. Gustavus Adolphus (the king, not the college) raised his only surviving child, a daughter, as a boy, and took efforts to guarantee her succession to the throne, a move that was remarkably prescient, or perhaps just realistic, seeing as it was a habit of kings to bloody themselves in battle, as Christina’s did, in honor of their Protestant faith (and burgeoning economy), dying when she was six and leaving her to in charge of the third largest nation in Europe. She ruled for ten years; her first duty that of receiving the Russian embassy, no small task, considering her age and the fact that her mother was so distraught over Adolphus’s death that she would not allow his body to be interred, rather preferring to visit his open casket every day for nearly eighteen months. Eventually, Adolphus’s daughter secretly converted to Catholicism, abdicated the throne to her cousin, and moved to Italy.
10/08/2008
9/05/2008
Prince Phillip
One last bit of non-New York color, before my life is completely ensconced in Manhattan's fall foliage: check out Phillips Seafood Festival Buffet, of Ocean City, Maryland. We did, but only externally--one of my traveling companions sampled the fare on an earlier trip to this lovely coastal town and suggested we dine elsewhere (in her defense, the visit was not of her own volition).
Phillips is an endless expanse of fried seafood and it's sundry companions (crab legs, french fries, and, I'd imagine, copious amounts of tartar sauce and ketchup). Unfortunately, and yet somehow predictably, it's not very good.
Despite its culinary failings, Phillips is world-renowned. This is what you do when you go to Ocean City. Afterwards, you can stagger down the boardwalk and ogle women in gold-lamé bathing suits. Or, as two women we observed coming from Phillips did, you can call friends and relations on your cellphone, click on the speaker phone (so as to capture the muddy Atlantic surf) and tell them "We're just calling to to brag that we just left Phillips!"
8/06/2008
Say yes to Michigan!
There is a surprisingly extensive list of songs about Michigan. Where, one wonders, are the songs about Connecticut? Of course, this is the only state where residents can hold up the palms of their right hands and point to where they're from. Now I can say yes to that!
A few for your listening pleasure:
see all of Greetings from Michigan by Sufjan Stevens
Half Acre, by Hem (you'll kno
w it from the Pay it Forward-esque insurance commercial, which, mercifully, is only one minute long and thus far less painful than the movie. You may decide how you feel about a company reminding you to do what your mama and papa taught you--not to mention anthropomorphizing itself as a paragon of responsibility. You know, in the great sellout debate, what I find most disturbing is not always the artist's willingness to sell their music to the Man, but the fact that the music I love also appears to be the Man's favorite too. While Andrew Bird's whistle really shouldn't fetch any price, I am glad he can make enough to keep himself in glockenspiels. It's just unnerving to hear his melodies trickling from the television. Or maybe it's the editorial hack job meted out on his music.)
Michigan, by the Red House Painters (I keep trying this band but they never take. They're one of those bands where the first 45 seconds of a song writhes with promise but by minute two you've memorized their three power chords and pasty lyrics and the incessantly nasal drone of the lead vocalist. In fact, your time would probably be better spent waiting for the seventeen-year cicadas to emerge. They'll be here, in Michigan, in 2021.)
A few for your listening pleasure:
see all of Greetings from Michigan by Sufjan Stevens
Half Acre, by Hem (you'll kno
w it from the Pay it Forward-esque insurance commercial, which, mercifully, is only one minute long and thus far less painful than the movie. You may decide how you feel about a company reminding you to do what your mama and papa taught you--not to mention anthropomorphizing itself as a paragon of responsibility. You know, in the great sellout debate, what I find most disturbing is not always the artist's willingness to sell their music to the Man, but the fact that the music I love also appears to be the Man's favorite too. While Andrew Bird's whistle really shouldn't fetch any price, I am glad he can make enough to keep himself in glockenspiels. It's just unnerving to hear his melodies trickling from the television. Or maybe it's the editorial hack job meted out on his music.)Michigan, by the Red House Painters (I keep trying this band but they never take. They're one of those bands where the first 45 seconds of a song writhes with promise but by minute two you've memorized their three power chords and pasty lyrics and the incessantly nasal drone of the lead vocalist. In fact, your time would probably be better spent waiting for the seventeen-year cicadas to emerge. They'll be here, in Michigan, in 2021.)
7/19/2008
sittin' on G at Marino's
My friend J– discovered Marino's a few months back, and I finally managed to slip down to Staunton for a visit. If you happen to find yourself in this corner of the world, you should aim to roll in on a Tuesday, about 8 p.m., if you'd like to find a seat. Last call is at 11, and if you have nice eyes someone might buy you a two-dollar beer. Keep drinking them, and you'll be feeling right and rosy—it may be the PBR, or it may be the twanging solo of a banjo in harmony with an upright bass and jagged voices that echo in from the Virginia hollers.
Marino's holds a bluegrass jam every week; you may wonder jealously why you spent all those years being a blandly predictable student, going to class, when you could have been learning to play the mandolin, or at least better rhythm on the guitar, because the woman in the corner of the room sounds like she maybe spent some time cavorting with the devil down in Georgia, and at this point you can't remember the content of those lectures, just the lines of that heartbreaking song, the boisterous man in the red suspenders, and the burning ache of cigarette smoke in your throat.
Overheard, above the guitar and harmonica:
a. Who was that Russian composer, who died 'bout forty years ago? Shostachovich.
b. They're sittin' on G a lot tonight.
c. (After a camera flash captures the side of one man's head) Damn! That's my deformed ear.
Only at Marino's. Walk past the lunch counter, settle yourself in a corner with a beer, and listen.
Marino's holds a bluegrass jam every week; you may wonder jealously why you spent all those years being a blandly predictable student, going to class, when you could have been learning to play the mandolin, or at least better rhythm on the guitar, because the woman in the corner of the room sounds like she maybe spent some time cavorting with the devil down in Georgia, and at this point you can't remember the content of those lectures, just the lines of that heartbreaking song, the boisterous man in the red suspenders, and the burning ache of cigarette smoke in your throat.
Overheard, above the guitar and harmonica:
a. Who was that Russian composer, who died 'bout forty years ago? Shostachovich.
b. They're sittin' on G a lot tonight.
c. (After a camera flash captures the side of one man's head) Damn! That's my deformed ear.
Only at Marino's. Walk past the lunch counter, settle yourself in a corner with a beer, and listen.
7/12/2008
take me home
if the fireflies and Shenandoah Mountains aren't enough, the Green Valley Book Fair is always there to tip the balance in favor of a certain state south of the Mason-Dixie.
I submit as evidence this list:
No Other Book, Randall Jarrell (read at whim! read at whim!)
The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris
The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn
Murder In Amsterdam, Ian Buruma
and a Spanish English Dictionary.
Grand total: $23.35
oh country roads take me home (when the book fair is in session)
I submit as evidence this list:
No Other Book, Randall Jarrell (read at whim! read at whim!)
The Little Disturbances of Man, Grace Paley
The Broken Cord, Michael Dorris
The General in His Labyrinth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn
Murder In Amsterdam, Ian Buruma
and a Spanish English Dictionary.
Grand total: $23.35
oh country roads take me home (when the book fair is in session)
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