Category Archives: humor

Barn Raising, Bookshop Sitting, Oddball Friends, and All!

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Jack’s weekly guest blog has a familiar musical refrain…..

i_get_by_with_a_little_help_from_my_friendsFriends and Neighbors –

We come from a region of the mountains known for its community spirit; think barn raising. And we have occasion to know that barn raisings are not dead, just mutated into other ways of helping each other. Our friend Witold, three blocks away, called Jack when he wanted to take down a tree. Elizabeth brought the baby goats over to be goatsitted for a weekend (and regular blog readers will remember the fun that produced).

Back when we started the bookstore we relied on our local oddball friends and champions to ‘mind the store’ on the odd times we had to be away. But that was usually only for a day or maybe two at any time.

That was also before ‘the Little Bookstore’ was published and turned our lives upside down. Almost immediately we had to find someone to look after the place for a month, and so the great ‘bookstore-sitter’ project began. To our great surprise it went viral – all over the internet as well as National newspapers, magazines and NPR. The wonderful Andrew Whalen was chosen out of nearly 200 applicants and was feted and fed by the aforementioned oddball friends and champions.

Since then we have continued to have occasions of being away for extended period, and continued numbers of equally wonderful and interesting folk staying in our guest room. They fall in love with our animals, our oddball friends and our town of Big Stone Gap. We look forward to Lisa Heins Vincent and her husband minding shop for a week in late April, and dissertation-writing Emily visiting this summer.

The trouble is that, amidst publicity and hoopla and longer visits from our much -appreciated longer shopsitters, the oddball friends and champions who live in town and give us a day here, a day there, tend to get overshadowed in their contribution to how this place runs.

Just yesterday our friend James spent a day looking after the bookstore, fielding phone calls, cash sales, credit card sales, book swaps for credit, inquiries about the cafe menu, etc., etc. In return he got lunch and the right to take any books he wanted off the shelf and go home with them. As I said to him “James – you know there’s no such thing as a – – – -”

So my day-late guest blog post this week (I couldn’t ask James to do that too) finishes with a belated toast: Please raise a glass to all our crazy, oddball, dedicated local friends and champions who have done even just one day’s duty in the bookstore – cheers, saludos, slainte etc. THANK YOU! When we talk about community spirit, we mean you.

The Hamsters in my Brain

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Jack and I are attending the Appalachian Studies Association Conference in Johnson City, TN this weekend, and it has been a busy couple of days. Saturday morning my colleagues Beth, Jody and I did a panel on combating Appalachian stereotypes in the media. Kind of an interesting row to hoe, and several people had stories to tell. On Sunday, I am heading a panel on adoption in Appalachia, after running a storytelling project with a local group that supports adoptive parents. (If you want to see the blog we just launched, visit ADOPTION IN APPALACHIA. (It’s also a wordpress blog.)

Between these were some fun meetings and some hard meetings, plus Jack and I joined Doug and Darcy Orr, President and First Lady Emeritus of Warren Wilson College, in presenting a panel on Doug and Fiona Ritchie’s book Wayfaring Strangers. The pictorial book chronicles the journey of songs and their singers from Scotland to Appalachia. It’s been really well received and is in its third printing. Jack is one of the source singers on the accompanying CD.

But that’s where things began to take a weird turn. The night before the panel, Doug and Darcy came to our hotel room to practice songs. We sat around the table working out dulcimer chords, guitar accompaniments, and harmonies. All very satisfactory and fun. We sang stuff just for the joy of the moment.

The instant we finished singing, we heard loud voices coming from the room next door, and Beth suggested the doors between the rooms might not be correctly closed; hence the volume. We checked our door: bolted and good to go.

But as Beth pushed against our door, voices from next door yelled “Are you trying to break into our room?” A second later the phone rang. Front desk had received a complaint: had we tried to break into the adjoining room?

When I stopped laughing, I said no and didn’t elaborate. A minute later, the phone rang again. A male voice demanded, “Who am I speaking with?”

Well, I was tired and I was sung out, but one brain cell still functioned, so I figured this was something to do with that mysterious crowd next door, and asked for his name instead. He said I had tried to break into his wife’s hotel room and demanded again to know my name.

I hung up, and the phone shrilled again immediately. I disconnected that call and rang the front desk, explaining the situation. They apologized profusely and said the phone call had not originated in the hotel, and they would ensure no further calls were transferred in.

Which really put a top hat on things, because if the guy who was calling in wasn’t in the room with his wife, whose was that male voice making very explicit suggestions quite loudly through the wall?

We gave up, and went to bed, but I don’t think we’ll be staying at the Carnegie again. Who in their right mind puts a phone call through to a room number if the caller can’t give a name? At least that couple didn’t batter the door down in the night, but I hope that poor husband figures a few things out.

sleeping hamsterMe, I can’t figure anything out. Six meetings, two panels and four hours of sleep have done for me. It was a good day today, and now the hamsters in my brain are asleep in their little exercise wheels.

Go by, mad world.