Month: December 2012

The Mummer’s Parade

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South Philadelphia String Band Brigade

Unless you are from around Philly, it’s unlikely you’ve heard of the Mummer’s Parade. If you associate anything with the word mummer, you may think some kind of British ritual, or Mardi Gras performer. For those unlucky enough not to have witnessed the New Year’s Day annual event, I feel sorry for you. The mummers are a unique experience, a combination marching band, mini variety show, and Ziegfeld Follies costumed extravaganza. The lengthy parade begins with what are loosely called Comics–men dressed up in various outfits carrying umbrellas weaving down the street, staggering because they are usually drunk. This is not a part of the parade I enjoy or am proud of, and if ‘tradition’ didn’t exist, the entire thing would disappear like bad booze down the drain. The second part of the parade is the Fancies competition. Whoops, I forgot to mention theparade not only entertains thousands along the Philly streets, but is a competition among distinct ‘brigades’ as they are named. The Fancies are elaborate costumed individuals with live music, but not string bands. Next, and the most popular, are the String Bands. They strut down the street playing banjos and other instruments to a theme–and act out a little storyline for the judges and audience at the designated spot. Their costumes are breathtaking, the choreography amazing, sets astounding, and presentations magnificent. The top string bands can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for their minutes in the spotlight, and they have to pay for all of it themselves. They hold fundraisers, play at weddings, Fourth of July gatherings, and Atlantic City extravaganzas to raise enough dough to pay costume, set designers, seamstresses, etc.  The prize money, if they are lucky enough to win, doesn’t cover all these expenses.

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A Little Paper Ephemera Excursion

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One of our fabulous finds.

After spending a nice day and night at a B&B in the Pocanos, we were perusing locations on the iphone where we could delve into more books, cooking pamphlets, postcards, etc like we’d bought for each other at antique malls as Christmas presents and we came across The Archive in Landsdale PA. We were

Necessary books, despite missing the half price sale.

lured by the promise of a huge attic sale of 1 dollar items, fill a bag for 5. Today we motored through Philly and hit the place if not running, at least walking quickly. And stopped in stride when we spotted a sign exclaiming a half price sale for all books–starting tomorrow. I cannot tell you how pissed I was over this new factor. Because we can’t be popping back and forth this distance and I wasn’t about to pay full price for something that would be drastically less expensive in 24 hours. Nonetheless I perused the children’s section, finding an Alice I didn’t own, a book about making dolls and dollhouses, and an obscure title illustrated by Maria Kirk. I did something I never do, I became pushy–I asked “could we pretend it’s tomorrow”? Naturally the answer was in the negative. I walked away.

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Nature vs. Nurture

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I used to believe that every human behavior could be explained by environment. Bad parenting begets bad people. No one is born evil, I’d scoff. It’s always the mother’s fault, Freudians would have us believe. And aren’t mothers of  perpetrators  who create mass destruction at fault?   The latest horrific act of violence has already been laid at the feet of the killer’s mother. The dead can’t speak, they can be assigned blame. Because we so need to blame. It must be the mother, autism, etc etc  Can’t be that someone is born with a piece missing, a vital piece of humanity left out. The ability to feel. More specifically, empathize, the human response to others problems or simply of being. To put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to use a more colloquial term. Society has discarded that old chestnut long ago. The idea that a crazy person’s offspring will be nutty  too, dissipated as more and more people lay on couches being psychoanalyzed. No more does the center theme of Eugene O’Neill’s odd never ending play, Strange Interlude, exist–that the son of an insane person has insanity in the blood, and one must not marry and interbreed with such people. Ok, so that concept my be extreme, but science has found the propensity for depression is passed from generation to generation, just as other bodily or mental conditions are. Is crazy, I mean violent crazy, also genetic and the ‘evil’ one not responsible, due to genetic predisposition? How about none of the above? What if sociopaths are born, and made? What if you take two individuals, treat them exactly in the same horrific manner, abuse them, deny any warmth or love to them, generally make life a living hell–and one turns out to be a decent member of society, the other a serial killer? Is it Nature or Nurture? I believe it’s both.

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Affirmations For Booksellers Who Do Too Much

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by Jas Faulkner

A little over a year ago, I sat down and created a list of guidelines for dealing with misconceptions the public has about what writers do. It was directed at the newer members of the writing pool at another website.  Last week I accidentally emailed it as a file to Sam and Tab, my bookseller buds down in Mississippi.  They made me aware of my mistake and told me that with some small variations, the list could actually apply to booksellers as well as writers.  Tab told me she read the list aloud and both of them more often than not shouted “YES!” or “AMEN” after each entry.

So, my Third Day of Christmas gift to the booksellers who read here, is your own list.  I did this to let all of you know how much I appreciate that I can still go somewhere and find a store full of books to browse and buy.

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Remembrances of Bookstores Past

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Myles Friedman’s excellent post about the lack of bookshops reminded me of all those wonderful bookstores I had the luck to visit during my years living in New York City. I took them for granted. It never occurred to me back then that bookstores were about to become extinct. If I happened by one, I’d go in. Simple as that. I seemed to find them easily, or they found me. I don’t remember the exact location of the original Murder Ink bookstore, but I do remember it was tiny, on a side street, and terribly intimidating. The only impression I remember was the owner wasn’t all that friendly. Apparently, that characteristic spread to many others who followed in the first Murder Ink’s footsteps. (The person I encountered was apparently the second owner, the original had already sold by the time I entered–20 or so years later, after many various booksellers, including myself, it closed. No, I wasn’t responsible for it going, ha. (maybe the last owner’s contempt of the genre he was selling had something to do with it–“After 10 years of owning Murder Ink, I was sick of mysteries, having felt as if I’d read every possible permutation of perfect crimes and brilliant, but flawed, detectives.”)

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That Best Book Feeling

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Best book feeling No. 1

There’s nothing like the excitement and anticipation when a long sought book arrives in the mail. I had two gems stuffed in the mailbox within days, and a third as a bonus. When the books are vintage children’s illustrated ones, the thrill of cutting loose the tape (usually with anything that seems remotely sharp, like pens, keys, nail files, because the scissors are too far away for my impatient fingers), ripping the tough cardboard, unwrapping the newspaper or other protectant and finally touching the front boards, is exquisite. Since I’ve ended  jewelry making and turned to selling digital downloads, I’m allowing myself purchases of illustrated books that normally would have been passed by, because the artwork within wouldn’t register small enough for a pin. Nothing extravagant, my budget ranges from 10 to 28 bucks-tops. Usually on the lower end, because it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of dough on a book if you cannot reclaim it through sales. Naturally, I convince myself the only reason I want these particular items is for the business, not for the sheer pleasure of owning them.

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Words That Don’t Fail

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by Jas Faulkner

The night that Susan Smith confessed to killing her two sons, I had drawn the short straw and was working the front desk and crisis line instead of my usual eight to sixteen hours behind the double layered locking steel doors that kept the rest of the world separated from my adolescent psychiatric clients and vice versa.  I watched the bright red sunset over West Nashville fade into the comforting  night that seemed to becalm the small hospital that had been rocking and rolling with code after code all day.

And then the first call came in.  It was a man and he was sobbing.

“I just want to know why,” he managed to choke out his question.

“Why what?”  I shifted into de-escalation mode without even thinking about it. “Talk to me and we’ll see what we can do to make this better.”

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Interviewing Dead Writers

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I’m struggling to find questions for those authors who are among the living, partially because I am woefully behind in reading current mystery writers’ work. It does take a modicum of knowledge regarding a detective series, or suspense novel which one can only really get from spending time trundling across the internet for tidbits, or cracking open and reading through a book. What I do

Erle Stanley Gardner who spent much of his time, alone, in the desert with not one, but three secretaries–all sisters.

have, is a ridiculous amount of dead authors books under my belt. It occurred to me that I have questions for many of those whose work lives on, long past their creators expiration dates. For example, Rex Stout. The man created an iconic character out of…? Did Mr. Stout dream up Nero Wolfe, the agoraphobic, beer swilling, orchid loving, gourmand after a indigestible meal? His cohort, Archie Godwin is more  typical of the genre, while Wolfe is decidedly a unique voice. Stout wrote other things before embarking on his best selling series. How and when did this inspiration hit him? I would think that a publisher being pitched the idea of Wolfe would have been skeptical at the very least. To Erle Stanley Gardner, the mastermind behind Perry Mason, I’d want to know why he couldn’t put pen to paper. He dictated his books to his, ‘secretary’.

A young Rex before the odd beard.

Quotations because he eventually married that secretary, finally, after the wife passed on. I’d also like to know how much or little real law is used within the books. When reading a Gardner, I’m struck by how Mason either eludes laws, or just plain breaks them and gets away with it. If, as a former lawyer, Gardner’s writing what he knows, did he circumvent the law while practicing?

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