Tag Archives: free books

AND OTHER DUTIES AS ASSIGNED

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Hey ho, just another day in a non-profit director’s life. Follow, please:

The “free library if you pick it up” consisted of 15 boxes, books a friend had decided she wouldn’t need now she was getting out of the massage business. I was heading to Wise County in a couple of weeks to run a monthly session of our Community Nourishment Project, aka the CNP. I knew a friend who would LOVE to have those books. Since she’d had a hard year, what the heck, haul them over to her next time I was going.

CNP is a pathways activity from pre-med through residency interacting with people who live in rent-controlled housing, so everyone understands each other when they meet in an examination or emergency room.

I was looking forward to the CNP this month; in July we hold our annual school supplies picnic. Well, what fool would buy the supplies in Wytheville and haul them to Wise County, right? Just buy them online and have them delivered!

Except, the delivery times for school supplies a month out from school opening are pretty scattered and we had to have them for the picnic this Saturday. And Friday I had appointments all day, so no shopping there. The only day I could go was Monday, plus my car was half-full of books. Well, how big can those supply lists be and it’s only 30 kids, right? My friend Nora volunteered to help me shop.

Four fully loaded shopping carts later, I left two very happy check-out ladies who had opened a private lane for us guarding the stuff with my friend Nora, and went to pick up our pick-up truck. The supplies completely filled the bed.

The truck bed full of kid stuff, my car stuffed with the giveaway library, my phone rang. Did my community nourishment project want 12 dozen ears of free corn from the gleaning society?

I booked a rental SUV and rejoiced in all the good fortune coming our way for the community nourishment project.

Enterprise car rentals has let me down before, but the one that happened the morning I planned to load all the good fortune was particularly spectacular; Enterprise employees aren’t normally rude while being inept, but that guy was. So I left without the SUV they didn’t have, sporting 750 cubic feet of haulage space, to figure out how to fit school supplies for 30 kids, donations from the local food bank, drink donations from the local women’s club, an entire Reiki and Reflexology library, and five dozen ears of corn in my Prius.

Have you ever seen a Prius stuffed with 1527 bits of school supplies, 96 ears of corn (they gave us eight dozen) and four coolers? I can’t roll down the windows. When I open the back door, lunchboxes will fall out.  But I’m really proud of that little tunnel between the notebook paper and the binders, allowing me a six inch square to see out the back.

Another day, another problem solved. Non-profit directors get stuff done.

Would anyone like some corn?

On the Road – Again!

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I’m in Hilton Head, South Carolina (for my sins) enjoying a great night catching up with old friends. Tomorrow all four of us will caravan down to SIBA, the Southern Independent Booksellers Association. It’s on the beach at Naples in the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

Yeah, life’s rough….

Friday I speak on a panel, and Saturday we get to run through the great hall with a bunch of other bookslingers, snapping up free galley copies and talking trade with the tribe. I’m very much looking forward to it, and there will be a lot to say once we get to the expo, but right now we’re all full of pizza, wine, and girl talk.

So in place of any meaningful blog, let me just tell you my favorite story so far from another friend at another book expo. My friend Jade is a university librarian who travels the world searching for good books for special collections. A veteran of many book conventions, she told me this story, called ARC-gate:

ARCs are advanced reader copies; publishers make them up in droves and hand them out at conventions and trade shows and such. They are coveted by librarians on tight budgets, booksellers on tight budgets, bibliophiles who managed to sneak into the expos… you get the idea. Everybody loves a freebie.

So, although the tribe of bookslingers usually consists of polite, well-mannered people, well, as Michael Moore observed, librarians–no matter how mild they look– are not to be messed with. Especially when their budgets have been cut.

At the expo my friend described, the ARCs were not so plentiful as those who sought them, and a few displays of bad behavior erupted. The word ‘fistfight’ hovered in the background as the lucky, faster few fled with bags stuffed with goodies, while the hesitant (or more polite) stared glumly at spaces where stacks of free books had been.

But the punchline came at the end of the weekend, when one of the more aggressive librarins proudly laid her stuffed-to-the-gills-with-books bag on the scale–

–and got socked with an overweight fine of $150. Which was not reclaimable on her expense form.

As my friend Deb, in whose house we rest tonight, is fond of saying, “Karma’s a bitch.”

(Don’t forget to enter caption contest VI from the August 29 blog! and potential bookshop sitters should read the blog from Friday past for details of how to apply. Thanks!)