Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

The Meeks and the Geeks have Inherited the Earth

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IMG_0092Our time has come, gentle little sweet people with weird hobbies! This past week, I have blessed the names of those who sew quietly at home, hoarders who handed over supplies, and geeks who own 3D printers.

God love you all! You are the new hipsters. Shouts out especially to John Maxwell, who runs a tech school. When asked what he was doing with his three 3D printers he said, “Waiting for someone to tell me how they could help, and ready to roll.” And to Lindsay who set her team in Kentucky to the same. And to Veronica, steampunk extraordinaire (or maybe she’s a biker) who invented a printable N95 and found filters for it.

Shout out to Lisa and Randy and Bonnie and the other Lisa and the other Wendy and Patricia and a few more people who said, “I found these masks in my barn/shed/workshop. Are they what you’re hunting?” That’s how 24 doctors in Norton got N95s, one outbuilding at a time. Blessings on your hoarder little heads.

mandyMandy and Bonnie and Karen and Lisa (yet a different one – word to the wise: get to know some Lisas; they get stuff done) and Anni and Beth and the other Beth and Betty and Summer and Mary Sue and a thousand other women and men getting cloth masks out to the home team: y’all rock. Those masks do three things: 1) help us not touch our face in public 2) slow the virus spread; it can get through the holes in fabric, but in the same way a small fish at a big net sometimes it bounces off a fiber instead, this is extra protection sufficient for public use 3) remind the wearer that they are loved enough that someone wanted them protected, and made or bought them a mask. Mental health is nothing to be sneezed at these days–er, no pun intended. Feeling loved is important, and we can literally feel the love warm and snug on our faces, every time our glasses steam up.

Go forth (figuratively) and conquer (literally) you geeks with your 3D printers and you meeks with those barns and sewing machines. We love and appreciate you!

Five years ago, and Today: HOW SOON UNACCOUNTABLE

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A friend reposted this blog I did five years ago today. And she’s right – it still fits.

starsLast night Jack and I sang for the St. Patrick’s Day event at the Fox House, home of another author who lived in Big Stone Gap. I wandered into his study before the event, feeling for a vibe. Didn’t really get one, but the house was full of people drinking green beer, so contemplation might not have been a good goal at that moment. But it was a lovely gig, a strong community pulling together, singing harmonies to the choruses, all sweetness and Picardy Thirds.

Walking home afterward, I realized how clear the night sky was–no moon, no clouds, every star hanging as if 12 feet above our heads. Back at the bookstore I dropped off my harp and hopped into our car to make for the reservoir, where there are no city lights whatsoever.

It was a strange drive. That’s not a road I’m very familiar with and it is full of hairpin curves up a wooded mountain. In the headlights, trees, a passing deer, even the road itself, were all monochrome pale black against the dark. The headlights barely cut into the next curve, and every time I swung the car I saw another row of those ghostly grey trees, hedging me in. A bit eerie. One starts to think about motor trouble and men with knives and rabid things in the woods…..

It began to feel foolish, this solo drive up a mountain on a fool’s errand. I pulled into the reservoir, hoping for enough clear space to see the night sky, turned off the headlights, cut the motor–

–and the stars came flooding in, past the windscreen, right past my eyes as though they wanted inside of me. Thousands of them. Constellations I’ve known since a child and many more I didn’t, all dancing together the instant the lights went out. Just like that.

It’s amazing how quickly some things change. All the turns in the road, the guardians at the gate, the grey washed-out things, they disappear. And there you are with all that glorious hidden brilliance suddenly in front of you, so bold and bright and beautiful you’re amazed you didn’t see it before. That you doubted it was there.

I love watching the night sky. It gives that combined feeling of confidence in the hands of a God who knows you, and humility at being a very small part of a Big Thing. You’re not the center of the dance, but you get to be in it. And whether you see a thing–the night sky, a pattern, a plan–or not doesn’t change its being there.