I spent the afternoon looking up ISBN's to check publication dates as a means of sorting hardcovers to go in either the fancy-pants "New Releases" section or in with the paperbacks. This is the glamorous life of a bookseller. I spend a lot of time with my computer. But, the really great news is that we got our first book shipment a week ago today. (However, it's entirely too small. We're placing another order ASAP.) Last week was the first week I went to the store to work every day. It was wonderful and awful and stressful and fun. The good does outweigh the bad and everyone is so excited and supportive. Just the same, it was nice to take the weekend off.
Our July 4th weekend was a blast. We hung out in John's hometown of Cumberland City (which is actually not a city, but a quaint, little town of about 300-350 people in 5 square miles) for a parade in the morning of the 4th. A picture of John and his mom and I watching the parade was on the front page of the local paper on Tuesday. Neat, huh?
At around noon, we met Sara and Chris back at our house and took them with us to a family get together at my great aunt's house. Sara, for the first time ever, got to experience the joys and terrors of swimming in a creek. It's mostly wonderful--all nice and freezing, cold, clear water. But then, suddenly your foot will land on a slimy patch of leaves (hopefully) and the water will be stirred up and... Well, it's a little freaky touching something slimy you can't see. I grew up swimming in creeks more often than pools, but all our L.A. apartments had pools, so I've gotten spoiled lately.
Charlie and Colton are about one summer away from being better swimmers than me. I have the buoyancy of a rock.
We hung out at my sister's house for dinner and then headed back to Cumberland City for the fireworks show the town has become famous for since John and I moved away. There are activities there all day on the 4th and when we got there my great uncle (brother to the great aunt whose house is beside the creek) was performing.
I hadn't heard him sing since I was a little girl. For a very short time, I took buck dancing lessons from a man I knew only as Mr. Spicer in Dickson. By the time I started, he was old and the other girls were supposed to teach me. All I really wanted was one of their flouncy red and white gingham dancing dresses, but that never happened. What did happen was that my cousins and I would dance in our jellies (which were louder than you'd think, compared to regular tap shoes) to the music of my great aunt and uncles.
This weekend, Sara invited us to a Murfreesboro Bluegrass festival called Uncle Dave Macon Days. It was super cool. There were tons of booths with handmade items for sale. Little areas of musicians were scattered throughout the area. And! Two Lincolns! Count 'em! Two Lincolns!
Any event with Double Lincolns walking around is inevitably going to have a high kitsch factor, but there was a feeling of genuineness and sincerity throughout the day. It was actually really lovely, in a way that made me homesick for another time. It was especially ironic when I, in fact, ran into one of the buck-dancing-in-jellies cousins...and she was competing!
In a way, I'm sad I didn't have the dedication to stick with dancing. It would be nice to be a part of the local heritage and keep something like that going. Maybe I'll sell a book on it?
I also ran into an old co-worker from L.A. I was very excited to see Stacey again. We worked together in the first bookstore I worked in. We were the two girls from Tennessee. She moved back into the area last year, too, and I was really happy to bump into her.
Here are a couple more pictures...
My new favorite picture of John. Mmm, deep-fried twinkies!
I just put up more pictures of Irish Day. These were taken my mother-in-law, Mickey. She's a great photographer in general, and her snapshots always seem to have more smiles in them than mine do.
So, it's the second week of Spring Break for the local kiddies (and our teacher friend Chris). There's been a LOT going on. First of all, regardless of it being a vacation-y atmosphere of late, the weather has been completely insane. The wind has been crazy today and right now I can actually hear it howling. (By the way, our house is basically in a hole. Or, as it is so loverly called 'round these parts, a holler.) Here's a couple of pictures:
Daffodils lining our driveway, 3/6/08
About 4 inches of snow, covering the daffodils, the very next day, 3/7/08
In total we got 8.5 inches. 3/8/08
In other news, but following the same theme of being busy, the big local Irish celebration was this weekend. John has put together a video of the highlights:
There are more pictures of snow and Irish Day up in my gallery. Enjoy!
I'm back in Tennessee. We just got our DSL hooked up yesterday. We still have several boxes to unpack. I'm going to build shelves for my books, so they'll stay in the boxes until that's done. That's going to take a while, too, since I haven't bought the supplies and have a long list of things to do beforehand. Aside from the books though, we just have a few boxes left.
I've had an extreme case of culture shock. It's only really extreme because I wasn't expecting any at all. I haven't really lived here since I graduated high school in 2000. A lot can change when you're gone over seven years. But the biggest differences are adjusting to being in the country after three years in the big city. For example, there are bugs everywhere. I was sweeping the floor yesterday and something in my dust pile was moving. It didn't even look like a bug. It was a tiny, teardrop-shaped worm thing with antennae. What was that? Oh, and our house had mice. We think we've caught them all (which makes them sound like Pokemon and, I assure you, these mice are not the kind of thing you want to carry around with you), but I was more than a little freaked out. I've never been afraid of mice before, but I was filled with this feeling that one was going to scurry out at any moment...like constantly anticipating someone jumping out and screaming "boo!" at you.
Okay, so bugs and mice aren't really examples of culture shock. They're more like examples of why pest control companies should be so successful here. As for my actual culture shock, I went to Wal-Mart within two days of getting to TN. There weren't any Wal-Marts in North Hollywood. That pretty much says it all.
and there was only one other baby in the hospital.
I've been reading Denison, Iowa by Dale Maharidge. The subtitle is "Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town." When discussing which town to use for this book, Maharidge says:
[I]t became rapidly clear that this book had to take place in Iowa. One reason was that the state is geographically in the center of the nation. Another reason was its neutrality. Many Americans have built-in prejudices against certain regions and states. "Alabama" said to a northerner conjures stereotypes, just as "New York" uttered to a southerner evokes another type. And to southerners and easterners, "California" has, well, its own baggage. Iowa's neutrality is why so many fictional stories from popular culture are set in the state:The Music Man, The Bridges of Madison County, Field of Dreams.
Iowa definitely is neutral. I'm actually reading this book and I have to keep reminding myself that the town isn't in Idaho or Ohio, as all three state names play a game of musical chairs ignorance in my mind. I've driven through Iowa. About a year ago. And I can't conjure one single image.
The book is really interesting though. I like the writing well enough, even though it is clearly coming from a more cosmopolitan person than any in Denison, which is unfortunate, in a way. Denison is described, maybe not in facts but in tone, as a miniscule town. When I read that it had a Wal-Mart, I thought, Oh. I guess it isn't all that small.
I am reminded that I live in the sprawling metropolis that is LA. Not only that, but I live in the valley. If Manhattan were an animal, it would be something like a cat, with long claws, balled up and ready to pounce. Los Angeles would be a sleeping St. Bernard, legs and feet carelessly spreading out all around him.
I took a ride through Laurel Canyon with my boss today. He doesn't have a lot of respect for the double yellow lines...as in, traffic should always stay to the right of the double yellow lines. He is much more creative than that. The car was in reverse for about a fourth of the time I was in the car. Oh, yeah, and we were lost.
As we rode along (before going into the hills), he pointed at various drugstores and coffee houses and told me what the lots used to hold when he was a boy. And it occured to me that this was a man who never really left his hometown. I know he's lived elsewhere and travelled, but that isn't the same. The comfort that must bring him startles me. I started getting these weird panicked feelings about going back home for my birthday...
I'm never going to see the places I grew up in ever again. Not really. There are more new businesses in town, more houses dotting the highway. Seeing those things gradually, like my boss was able to do, at least means that you're in the loop.
I did a couple of image searches for my hometown...and the results were almost spooky: the courthouse, the stained glass windows of the church I grew up in, a guy I went to high school with, the parents of a girl I knew, Main Street during the parade, etc. Things so familiar, but totally foreign.
Maybe I should read some Thomas Wolfe. Somewhere I have a memory of a professor saying, You can't go home again. You really can't.
"magnolia in exile" may be the funniest thing I've ever thought. ever.
We're watching King of the Hill, the third episode out of eight showing tonight on FX's "King-sized Friday," which I'm totally devoted to. Except that this happens to be my least favorite episode (the one where Bobby gets a ventriloquist dummy and inadvertently freaks out Dale...and me...because it's just a creepy-looking doll).
I finished Persepolis (by Marjane Satrapi) Wednesday night. Yestday at work I told Anna that I'd read it (she was the reason I wanted it anyway, because she said it was so good) and she said she had just started reading Persepolis 2 on Wednesday. She finished it on her break, brought it to work for me to borrow, and I read the whole thing last night. I read super-crazy-slow, but graphic novels go pretty fast. Even so, I was still pretty surprised to finish two books in a week. I literally could not stop reading them.
That Sarah Vowell book I've been reading keeps, sort of, getting less and less enjoyable. It's weird. I mean, sometimes I really like it. And I just like her style, in general. But the last story I read, about her and her sister traveling down the Trail of Tears to better understand the history of their people, just didn't sit well with me. The idea is great...but she just didn't carry it out very well. There's this one part where she's at a historical landmark near the Tennessee Aquarium and she starts getting angry because the happy kids going to see the pretty fish aren't being told about the landmark by their teacher. And while I do, to a certain degree, see her point, there's something about the way she wrote it that makes it sound like the kids should be made to feel guilty for something that happened before their grandparents were even born. She compares the Trail of Tears to the Holocaust on more than one occasion, which I think is relatively acurate...but I wonder if she begrudges little German kids and wants them to go around feeling guilty on every school fieldtrip they get to take. She even goes to the Hermitage and confronts some poor tour guide. (Andrew Jackson was largely responsible for the Trail of Tears.)
This all makes some sort of sense. I know that. But it's her attitude. Too willing to blame people who really aren't related to the issues.
Later she talks about Pea Ridge National Military Park in Arkansas, a battleground where about 800 Cherokee soldiers fought for the Confederacy. Sarah Vowell has this to say:
I'm making myself sick trying to reconcile the fact that oppressed Indians could live with owning slaves, to die for slavery's cause.
We all know, without question, that slavery is, was, and will always be, horrible. But to act as though that's the only thing the Civil War was about...well...that's just ignorant.
I'm sick of feeling like I'm supposed to be ashamed because I'm Southern. I'm not. At all. Nor am I going to defend the Confederacy. It's just that...I don't deal in absolutes.
I remember going to Shiloh as a kid. Actually, all I remember was part of the film we watched in the visitor center...the nearby creek turned red with blood. The water ran red. That's straight out of Exodus. A plague on Egypt! 150 miles from Nashville! I was terrified.
In my annoyance, I was suddenly filled with the desire to read about the history of the South. To sort of know the truth in a very symbolic, but real way. I would write a book about it. Me living in California, finding my way home metaphorically. Here are some possible titles (mainly, I'm joking):
The Battle of Burbank A Year Without Rain (Except for a Couple Weeks in December) Magnolia in Exile
Retail on Christmas Eve. And yet, still I like my job, which I've been told, has become permanent. This is good news. I like the idea of "free" insurance. Daily striving to make my life more Canadian.
I toot-tooted my French Horn (a.k.a. Freedom Horn, a.k.a. American Noisemaker: Another Way We Stick It To 'Em) at my uncle and aunt's Christmas Day dinner party. They served a delicious chicken fetticini. But it was no honey-baked ham. Or green bean casserole.
There were Santa hats, carols by the piano, everything but the snow. Which seems to have taken up residence in Tennessee.
On Christmas Eve, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights strung around palm trees. And I struggled with myself to imagine "the first Christmas" and how palm trees are actually much more Christmas-appropriate than store-bought, pre-shaped Douglas firs.
Every now and then I get a wanderin' urge to see Maybe California, maybe Tinsel Town's for me There's a parade there, we'd have it made there Bring home a tan for New Year's Eve
My sister-in-law got here tonight. John got a special "my sister's a minor" pass to go back to the gate to meet her. I had to wait out by baggage claim, which was okay, because I didn't have to go through security and take off my shoes. (Though, I must say, I do have on nice socks today.)
Standing there looking over the barrier by the luggage carrousels, watching people hug and lug around luggage, I started to wonder if the people waiting beside me were from Nashville, where Misty's plane came from. As people filtered in from the gates, I felt this weird affinity for them, having just come from "my home land." Probably the only time in my life I'll every feel an affinity for people from Providence, which is where the plane came from before it picked up Misty in Nashville.
So. Back to work today. Back to normal life, except that we have company and my birthday is Wednesday. The Christmas rush is over and the gift certificates have already started to resurface.
Disneyland or the beach tomorrow, depending on how cold it is.
I have a student this week, a seven-year-old girl. And I'm actually going to teach the general curriculum. This week has started out in a way that I would describe as normal, except that it hasn't happened to me before...which goes against the point of "normal."
I started reading Red Clay, Blue Cadillac last night on the train back from Grand Central. I just finished the third story. It's so different from the stuff I normally read, I'm not sure how to "judge" it. For example, one of the stories I read today was first published in Playboy.
Yes, I know. And Kurt Vonnegut is free to get his stuff published wherever he wants. It's not like I've read any of it either. Right. Right. For the articles, I know. I know.
It leaves me wondering though, are Southern women (the subject up for analysis) really that much different from other women? And if so, do I have it? Makes me wanna go around calling people honey. And now that I think about it, I kind of do that already. But not with a pot of decaf in one hand and a face like Naomi Judd. Where'd that image come from anyway? Have I ever actually met anyone who fit that description? My grandmother's name was Cordelia and she made the best buttermilk biscuits in the county, I'd be willing to bet.
On Friday, one of the campers (who I think is 15 or 16) was talking about the way Southerners talked and asked me about the phrase "it's gonna hit the fan," which he so politely edited for my camp-counselor, could-get-him-in-trouble ears. He knew what it meant...but somehow wanted to attribute it to rednecks in a saloon [because we had so many of those in the rural South] getting bored...or something like that. I don't know. It didn't make any sense.
And by the way, his Southern accent sounded like the very stuff headed for the blades.
