Hope to read from you soonest

Every few weeks I throw up Book Repair for Booksellers on Craigslist...not that it generates any sales, but it may drive a few people over to SicPress for supplies...hey...a girl can dream right? and like any good or bad Craigslist ad it generates a bunch of spam that purports to be from 'REAL' people. Most often it is someone wanting you to send you a cashiers check etc etc etc.... But lately the ones I am getting are rather cryptic.....i mean it is BLATANTLY suspicious..the lack of articles in the grammar for one thing... but I am left wondering exactly HOW they intend to make a buck by buying my book....or pretending to by my book...i guess the mysteries of the criminal mind will keep me guessing for years. Hi Seller, I read your description and am highly impressed and Interested in buying your Books. I'll be needing some Books and Magazines to Open my New Book Store and i got your advertisement on Craigslist when am searching via the Internet, so i decided to mail you. I'll like to have details of the Books/Magazines you posted on Craigslist, the total selling of the item to me, As I will not be able to come down to check it out and i will love to know if you have more Books/Magazines to sell out as well Co's i will like to buy more Books/Magazines to keep in my Book Store. So kindly get back to me with the list of the Books & Magazines you have for sell and pics if you have any that you can send to me. And remove the ads off Craigslist.org as i will like to buy the items from you immediately and keep in my Book Store for whom might need them.Hope to read from you soonest. Regards, Mrs Susan

wet apples

On Saturday I took the trip into Boston to the Book, Print and Ephemera fair at the Radisson. It's always a nice little fair - spread out over a few conference rooms close enough to be considered intimate yet not so crowded that it would be squalid. And the usual cast of New England characters show up making it a good day to get out of the house...but it rained...a lot...and i made an asinine decision to go my usual route...drive to a subway parking, change trains and get off three cold and wet blocks from the destination... completely ludicrous...unless the Radission was charging $15 bucks an hour to park I would have actually SAVED time and money if I had just driven straight in to town and parked in the garage. By the time i arrived I was a drowned rat ..btw just because your trench coat LOOKS waterproof doesn't mean it is...i'm just saying....my heart really wasn't in the shopping.. i was too cold and wet and the the lighting was too dim to enjoy it...i think my eyes have altered again oh joy. I took a couple of turns around the place, shook a few hands gave away some free erasers and bought a total of one book...an English Cookbook on Apples. Not that I didn't see at least 5 books that I would have gladly stolen if given the chance, but folks always bring their BEST copies of things where I would be perfectly happy with the second worst copy. I haven't met all the booksellers in the world, but I am kinda going with the hypothesis that the difference between a real bookseller and a collector masquerading as a bookseller is the quality of their personal collection. A professional bookseller's collection is usually kind of embarrassing when they kick off. You see we have sold off any book worth its salt and replaced it with a reading copy, whereas a collector takes more joy in the having and holding part of business and will keep the better copy for themselves and sell the lesser. But that's just my opinion, i could be wrong...anyone have a Weegee by Weegee without a dj? thanks for looking.

the private library

If you haven't been keeping up the biblioblog The Private Library has been rocking....and this latest series of educational posts "Photography and the Private Library" are not to be missed. The information and history offered freely for the enjoyment of one and all is an embarrassment of riches...the kind of biblio material usually available at a cost. This nine part series is worth reading and perhaps saving. So pour yourself a cuppa and go do something on the net that won't make you feel like you are wasting your time.

some fridays are worth the wait

I spent thursday churning out a large order for a special customer...well technically it took all week and as profitable as it was - it's all spent every penny on frivolous things like insurance and utilities. But after I had washed my hands of the entire thing and before I wrote the 1st check, I celebrated with a trip to McIntyre and Moore in Cambridge. Granted the shop has changed locations more times than Nathan Detroit's crap game, and has even changed hands...for me there is ALWAYS something to buy. ' I wasn't looking for anything to resell just books for myself and I kinda had to stop after an hour or so, because the longer I looked, the taller my pile became. (M&M likes that, they give discounts on the height of your book stack...no shit.) I came away with much to read: A Great Idea at the Time by local boy Beam is the history of the Great Books series; The WPA Guides: Mapping America...the history of the WPA Guidebook series; Writers, Plumbers and Anarchists: the WPA writer's project in Mass; Swindler, Spy, Rebel: the Confidence woman in 19th century America; a contemporary travel book about a guy who rode from Turkey to Wales on horseback; and a UK travel book that follows the BBC shipping forecast route...I kid you not; and a copy of Barbara Ehrenreich's 1973 monograph on Witches, Midwives and Nurses. [the copy of McCaffrey's Hound came in the mail from Old Bag Lady books] . So all in all it was a good day for the pile on my sideboard.

we buried my cousin last week..you know the one, the younger, happier, friendlier, more successful cousin, the yardstick i have been compared to most of my life. i am sure we could have been fast friends if we hadn't been family. she was killed slowly and horribly by stomach cancer. the universe is awful funny like that. this is Franklin, he was grabbed up by dog, found sick and injured and THEN put outside in a box by the trash. he still wobbles when he walks but he's doing alright. just in case, i made arrangements to be planted in the yard with the pets when the time comes.

special sauce

Catablogs...nope nothing feline about them... i had visited a couple and added an RSS feed to my list but i hadn't given them much thought until now. The special collections librarian one city over has started blogging their catalog...cata-blog get it? Queen City Massachusetts - which i find awesome...every object has a story and with catablogs, the object, pamphlet or image gets its fifteen minutes of fame too. Here's a nice little blog post from Geneaology Insider with a sweet list of other Catablogs. Stupid publisher tricks • Scholastic has no love for Luv Ya Bunches...a young adult title about four elementary school girls named after flowers...but OOPS...one of them has TWO mommies! and that's apparently one too many for Scholastic. WTF? I can't really comment on it properly..because when I try i start using expletives and hitting the keyboards like I am punishing them. blog of note • if you haven't seen it you HAVE to check out Letters of Note blog... it rules.."Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. " Seriously i haven't read one thing there that wasn't fascinating.

just along for the ride

I wish I had staged that shot..but nope.....the cat sauntered out of one yard across the road in front of me and into another yard. When the universe does that to you all you can do is sit there and watch your life unfold. I've been watching a lot of other people's lives lately...the spaghetti and bean feasts, the fleas and forums etc . . i shot images of a town hall forum the other night and if you eliminate the pols and the journos i didn't know anyone else in the room. Life looks different through the camera lens . . . i am still uncomfortable shooting humans..with a camera...i spent 20 years shooting things that don't ask you why. ...i watched the 'real' news photographer fly about the room like a hungry hummingbird - perhaps one day i will be less self conscious.

irony ain't dead...just a bit snarky

isn't that the most beautiful thing you ever saw? to me it looks like puppies and kittens dipped in chocolate... Technically she is called a percontation point - a 'rhetorical question mark'. . . an irony mark also called a snark or zing. Created by Henry Denham in the 1580s, it pops up in literature every century or so, but never really caught on. I can't be the only person who thinks that is a terrible fate for such an incredibly useful invention. I'm gonna make it my mission in life to use this sticky puppy as much and as often as I can. Let's take back the snark people, we need her, we live in an age where irony is pretty much a contact sport. I may even get it tattooed somewhere. What do you think؟

1001 uses for books - still MORE jewelery

From BlackSpotBooks on Etsy Library of antique and scrap leather books for the neck - eleven miniature books $325.00 USD alas it is sold out.

back to the future

Hmm . . . i forgot how uneventful my regularly scheduled programming is . . . if there are any orders i pack em . . . list books online if i have any. . . rinse lather and repeat. But I am breaking up the day by caulking all the windows in the joint and some of the walls and doors too. I really loathe giving up hard won cashy money to the utility vampires. This year I even had the stove permanently disconnected...the idea of a pilot light burning night and day in an oven i don't use was making me crazy. I have a counter top oven and a microwave i won't starve. When facing a long winter's indebtedness to the Gas company, global warming doesn't look so bad. To be fair the weather these last couple of days was rather nice, if you don't count the snow squall the other day...in New England we hardly notice such things.. I finally went through most of my mother's mystery boxes and culled them down to just 'nice' things...yellow ware bowls, cut crystal creamers etc... I guess ebay will get some of my business...those aren't things I will EVER use. Her clothes are the only things I still haven't donated, but that I can do anytime. Many place still smell like her....este lauder and mothballs. I have been putting a lot more effort into MethuenCommon.com perhaps it gives me the illusion that i have a life. I now have an eye on revamping this website using the new software and collating all the practical information into findable form, and relegating all my ranting and babbling to a less prominent position. I think this used to be a bookish blog. worth reading• From TIME.com Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play "Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind — not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III. Literature scholars have long debated whether the play was written by Shakespeare — some bits are incredibly Bard-like, but others don't resemble his style at all. The verdict, according to one expert: the play is likely a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, another popular playwright of his time. (continue reading)

kmart rules

....my time with the census is almost up, not that it hasn't been a blast, but it was very much like watching sausage getting made: kinda icky and uncomfortable. Back to living hand to mouth, like everyone else. It seems that invisible timer went off and all my mechanical items broke at once....my postal scale, my dvd player, my laptop, even my bestest sunglasses snapped in half. I mailed the sunglasses off to the first fix it place I found online, and picked up a replacement dvd player off ebay, but believe it or not the postal scale was a pain in the ass...Staples sells nothing but overpriced and digital crap, none of which are ever in stock...but after trying 4 stores one night I found that regardless of their website info, slow and steady K-Mart stocks the genuine USPS Postal Scale for a reasonable price no less. saved my ass I will tell you. Now that i have the laptop back I am making up for lost time things i found online today: - the Impossible Project is making great strides trying to resurrect Polaroid's instant photography technology - WWII Huts Rescued!! Bletchley Park has been awarded a grant by the National Lottery of £460,500. There's still a long way to go - which is why it will be the focus of fundraising efforts as the main charity for National Shed Week 2010 - but it's a great start. - Ann Frank video is on Youtube, the only known film footage of Anne Frank has been added to youtube by the Anne Frank Museum. - from NPR, This American Life "Books that changed your life" I may have posted this before, but it doesn't suck. and from the I am not making this up department.... Amazon Launches Same Day Delivery in Seven Major Cities and Expands Saturday Delivery Options ....no shit... Items ordered before the following local cut-off times will be delivered the same day: New York City – Order as late as 10 a.m. Philadelphia – Order as late as 10 a.m. Boston – Order as late as 10:30 a.m. Washington D.C. – Order as late as 10:30 a.m. Baltimore – Order as late as 10:30 a.m. Las Vegas – Order as late as 11 a.m. Seattle – Order as late as 1 p.m. WTF? who needs things THAT fast ...better than that..who has all this excess money to spend on same day delivery?