My book sale bag runneth over

Once a year at the old local hotel in the conference room, a local nonprofit group has their fundraising book sale. Sunday is bag bargain day: Fill an Albertson's plastic shopping bag with books for $10 (sans collectibles, of course).

I cleaned up this year. I practically zead it:

Here's a catalogue, with commentary to spice it up a bit (pictures below):

• American Photographers of the Depression (depression-era photog is one of my half-assed obsessions. The depression is such a huge part of who we are, and photography was really coming into its own at that time.)

• Two mid-century hiker's/backpacker's guidebooks

• Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand, which might sound lame, but Deborah Tannen is a rocking linguist.

• Jung's The Undiscovered Self  (I snatched that book up faster than a dog on bacon.)

• A mag-type book about barn decoration symbolism (hexes on barnsides! oh my!) and another about Pennsylvania folklife (some of my ancestors are Pennsylvania Dutch, and I dig stuff about folklife and symbolistic art)

• A photography/anthro book about New Orleans African-American spiritual folk culture (YES)

• The Common Stream: Two thousand years of the English Village (something I've been wanting to know more about since I read a Gary Snyder essay that talked about the commons. Don't we all have this vague notion, probably from children's fairy tales, about a village life seemingly outside of time and historical markers, rife with bears, fresh-made bread and free fishing?)

• Skeletons of a Bridge, a small press book of stories and oral traditions of the Taos Pueblo

• Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America (The back cover says she started in Eastern Oregon and crossed 14 states with a shotgun and a few belongings. This woman is my hero! I love it when you find out everything you were led to assume is bullshit. People did stuff, people knew stuff, women kicked ass in Victorian times too, and there you have it.)

• Everything You Need to Know About Latino History (stickin' it to Arizona lawmakers and honoring Librotraficante)

• Poetspeak (poets on their writing—books like these are comparable to self-help books for normals)

• Steinbeck's The Red Pony and The Moon is Down

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (my copy is coming apart, and this one is green!)

• Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

• Best Women's Erotica No. 4

• Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (I need to read this already)

• A sweet little chapbook-style "Walking" by Thoreau

• An equally sweet little copy of "On Love and Friendship" by Emerson, with mod art nouveau-styled print illustrations

• Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw, whom I've been meaning to read

• The Financial Lives of the Poets, by Jess Walter, whom I went to listen to at WWU

• Thich Nhat Hanh's No Death, No Fear (I'm a sucker for new age spiritualism, the best of which I lump, with good philosophy and psychiatric studies, into a Blows-Your-Mind bucket)

• A whole bunch of poetry (Petrosky, Petrarch—the sonnet guy, Alice Walker, Whitman U students, zen poetry, Poetry mag, Euripides, the actual Whitman, an anthology...)

• A paperback book of master printmakers of the 20th c. (my trade; I ought to know a thing or two about my context)

• A book about American folk tales and myths (one more for the collection)

• Poor Richard's Almanac (also chapbook style, with the original styling of type and borders, etc., which, as someone who works in publishing and makes prints, I find very interesting)

• A book called Hiroshima by John Hersey

• A couple fiction books and some other stuff I've yet to describe but looked interesting

• A bag of records and audio books (these were free and pretty picked over, but I did snag One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and a few others)

The pretties

Awesome

The spoils

Can you BELIEVE I got all this for a 10 dollar bill? (I filled a bag to bursting, and right after I paid, the bag DID burst. I ended up putting it all in a box, and I probably ought to have paid for two bags.) I was fighting for elbow space with all kinds of people who were equally gleeful, but no fights broke out this year (last year was a shitshow of crazed, glossy-eyed fanatics, all vying for that same elusive book that you must surely have been standing over.) I was jealous of a friend who picked up a weird old book with photographs of signs and one about repairing television radios (?). One woman was so into it that she left her purse on the other side of the room and forgot about it. 

Book sale Sunday is such a wonderful day. It reminds me of the joys of my summer of '07: sorting through boxes of donated books at St. Vincent de Paul. This is the kind of thing where you find the forgotten, the weird, the looked-over, signs of outdated beliefs and records of people's lives and what once mattered, the fleeting bits of pop culture that come and go, the book you never would've sought on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. When I get to heaven, I hope it turns out to be not a library, but an enormous garage sale overflowing with used books.

Gluten-free, egg-free pancakes and the immediacy of Saturday mornings

One of my favorite things to do on a weekend morning, particularly in the lower light of the three seasons-that-are-not-summer in the PNW, is to wake up at a reasonable hour, spin some Simon and Garfunkel, and putter around in the kitchen. This morning, the album of choice is Bridge Over Troubled Water, and I decided to finally try my hand at gluten-free, egg-free pancakes (out of a package—actually, two packages).

I used Arrowhead Mills organic pancake mix, and for the eggs I used Energ-G egg replacer for the first time. I also don't have any milk in the house, and one of the things about Simon and Garfunkel mornings is that the minute you step outside to take out the garbage or borrow sugar from a neighbor or run to the store (which is only three blocks away, in my case) to get some milk, you've broken the magic spell. Once again, one of the joys of being single (for one must claim the joys one can) is that you can do what you want and envelope yourself in a lovely world of your choosing on lonely Saturday mornings. Anyway, I had to use the very last of my powdered milk—a very handy thing to keep around, by the way, for anyone who doesn't keep his or her fridge stocked with milk at all times (and I don't, because it often goes bad when I do).

I whipped up the egg replacer without the benefit of exact science—I have no measuring spoons, and this I should remedy soon—so I made roughly two-ish eggs? and proceeded from there. Cooking in my kitchen is a game of chance and guesswork.

The recipe on the bag called for honey; I thought about replacing it with sugar, which is much cheaper, but now, tasting the pancakes, I'm glad I didn't. The honey gave them a great flavor that complements the surprisingly eggy flavor one expects in pancakes (but which I was surprised to get out of fake eggs) very nicely.

Gluten-free, egg-free pancakes. The picture looks rather lurid in the light—with a greenish hue—because it was taken with my cell phone and on my coffee table (which also serves as my dining table). 

Overall, the pancakes are too heavy, but I think that's owing to my inability (or stubborn refusal) to measure exactly. The first couple pancakes I made in particular will be bricks; when I first made the mixture it was more like airy dough than pancake mix, but after I cooked the first two I got brave and added more and more milk until the mixture was runny as pancake mix should be, with success. So that's an A for Arrowhead Mills pancake mix: Not only do they taste like pancakes, but the process of making them is satisfyingly similar, and the dough is a similar consistency. They are fluffy and browned up in nice pancake-like dapply patterns (as you can see in the picture), though in the center there is that slight grittiness that you get from using rice or potato flour.

And that's a definite A+ for Taste for Energ-G egg replacer, though since this is my first time using them I can't report yet on their consistency or usefulness in doughs that require the other properties of eggs, such as the fluffing factor or the sticking factor.

I topped the pancakes with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, my favorite light spread with a stupifyingly horrible name, and Safeway Organics maple syrup, which is a bit runny but a nice price for those of us who just make a living wage.

I have coffee percolating on the stovetop, fake flames dancing in the fake gas stove, and the real deal playing on my record player. The wind outside is howling and I have a million things to do today, but these concerns only lend to my awareness of these walls and this immediate moment and make me grateful for my winter cocoon.

Sincerest form of flattery

I love things—and people—that stand in opposition to the fascism of modern life. I suppose we'll never have a society without ridiculous constraints. There's never been a Golden Age free of tyranny and the evils of poverty, disease, war, organized religion, or brand-name hoodies, except in the imaginations of we Don Quixotes of the world. Maybe this is what makes certain things like music and art more beautiful. And adds a halo to those who stand for freedom.

Lately I've been thinking especially about three people with those halos: Frida Kahlo, Stephen Fry, and Gram Parsons. Silly, I know. I just love what each of them stand for, and I think my admiration says something about the things that hold me back.

Consider Frida. She wasn't afraid to be different. She was beautiful, partly because she accepted herself (and her mustache) the way she was. She didn't give a flying f*ck what other people thought of her. Her art and style were completely fresh and contemporary, but celebrated traditions. She constantly referred—with pride—to symbols and values of the people of Mexico, whom she loved even as she put up with misunderstanding and rejection. And her art is so good—unique, personal, symbolic without being comical or simplistic.

Then there's Stephen Fry. I'd be oh-my-god so embarrassed if he read this, but I don't think there's any reason to fear that will happen. He's intelligent and funny, and he's capable of being both without allowing skepticism and cynicism—natural outcomes of his high level of intelligence and humor—to make him come across as negative or hateful. He's wonderful. I aspire to achieve his mixture of humor, intelligence, and kindness. And I only wish I could be half as charming—a gift my brother was granted in excess but that skipped me.

And Gram Parsons. For me, he's a symbol of the American West (even though he's not actually from the West, and his music more closely fits the "country" in "country western")—and of a lonely kind of freedom. He died at that age and at a time when purity and beauty began to give way to corruption—that's really when beauty shines the brightest. This, too, is how I think of my West, of the land of trailer parks and dessert flowers and logged mountain peaks. Like Frida, he didn't seem to care what anyone thought, or at least he didn't let that stop him, and he embraced the old and the new together in a personal kind of religious symbolism. If you don't see what I mean, consider that he called his favorite music "Cosmic American Music." And he sang it really beautifully. Wearing a white leather Western suit bedecked in rhinestones, with images of pot and pills and naked ladies—and a burning cross.

Others, by the way, include Woody Guthrie, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Richard Brautigan, Shem (the wild one, Rumi's best friend), Billie Holiday, Bill Murray, Pancho Barnes, Joni Mitchell, Emerson, Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Picasso, Gary Snyder (notice a trend? They're almost all artists); for all their flaws and shortcomings (being human), they stand for freedom and creativity. I guess the cause of my admiration is rooted in my own fierce shyness and fear of rejection, both with my art and in my personal life. Maybe in most of them I also detect a bit of that shyness and vulnerability that plagues me, but maybe I'm assigning traits based on my own experiences. I don't know any of them; how can I admire them as actual people? They just stand for something, each a little differently, that I would like to nurture and grow inside myself.

A coworker once told me (in my impressionable 20s) that if I admired somebody else, I should consider what traits they possessed that I so admired. And name them. And then recognize that I must also possess these traits; otherwise I wouldn't recognize them. And the same went for things I disliked in others. (By the way, that coworker turned out to be an immature jerk, ultimately, at least in the workplace. What does that say about me? Hm.)

It's a scary thought. If you can give it a name, you own it. You possess the same trait. But it's also nice to consider. Maybe I can be as brave and colorful as Frida, or as bright and witty as Stephen Fry, or as beautiful as Gram Parsons. Maybe the fascism I referred to is really just the roadblocks I put in my own way.

My smile is stuck

When you're talking to an interesting guy and he mentions his wife.

I never know what to do with my face.

Calypso

I love folk recordings and musicology (what the what? I originally wrote "folk etymology"); it's one of my little half-assed obsessions.

One day I borrowed Calypso Awakening from the library. I didn't really think I particularly liked calypso (not that I didn't like it), but I was surprised to find out that, as with all genres, its roots and local recordings are full of energy and conviction. The album is a collection of recordings made by Emory Cook back in the 50s and 60s in Trinidad. The music is fresh; the recordings, while I guess very high-tech for their time, capturing live performances—sometimes on the move in street carnival—actually have that scratchy, earthy, organic sound I love. And it's totally lively and loaded (political correctness does not enter into the equation in these songs, and part of calypso is verbal sparring).

A couple gems: "No, Doctor No" by Mighty Sparrow, the "Yankees Gone" steel band procession, "Come Go, Calcutta" by Lord Melody, "He No Dead Yet" by King Fighter, and "Bongo Man" by Wrangler. And of course "Jean and Dinah," also by Mighty Sparrow. (You can sample the songs on the album's Amazon or Smithsonian page.)

Virtual readers?

If you're reading, stop by and say Hi! I don't know whether or not to keep this blog, so I would love some feedback, constructive or positive.