Tag Archives: Jack Beck

Retirement, my Arse

Posted on by
2

Jack’s guest blog on the loneliness of the overworked bookseller

When I joke about there being no such thing as retirement I mostly am really just joking. Except this week…..

We’d only just got through getting Wendy’s new book into a formal proposal and out the door (a process that involves Wendy disappearing into the basement for hours on end while I cope with a list of chores not limited to but dominated by laundry, food services, bookstore management, and dog/cat care) when it was straight into the Celtic Festival with all its associated hair-tearing last minute complications. (Our favorite “least favorite” festival moment: 10:45 a.m. I go out to start my little red ’62 MG to carry Lady Big Stone in the parade, and the engine won’t turn over. Started at 11:02 for the 11:15 parade. I’m too old for that kind of excitement.)

I will add that Big Stone Celtic this year surpassed itself: lovely attendance, lovely weather, lovely performers, lovely vendors, lovely feel to the whole two days. It was delightful.

The day after that loveliness, all the signs and banners had to be taken down and stowed. One of the reasons we had such good attendance is that our friend Elissa headed up publicity; she thought of places to put those signs and banners that defy description.

On Monday we basked in the glow of photographs and comments on the Big Stone Celtic Day’s facebook page, and on the bookstore’s. We must have basked for twenty full minutes before it was time to turn our attention to the SECOND STORY CAFE–opening Oct. 8–and the health inspector’s visit to approve it. Bruce, the inspector, is coming tomorrow, but Rick, the heat and air guy, is still installing the new heat pump in the attic: estimated completion Friday.

Oh, and our friend Gayle Ross will be telling at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, so she’s coming up to do a house concert on Monday, Oct. 7. Quick and intensive advertising to be done.

Surely there can’t be anything else?

Well, we decided to empty the ‘love shack’ and shift all the romances from there into the shop since it’s not a great space for retail in winter. We’re creating a couches-and-coffee room upstairs next door to the main dining room, lining its walls with shelves, and bringing up the classics and poetry; the romances will go where those used to be on the bookshop’s main floor. Unfortunately, we can’t move them yet because first the kitchen has to be ready for Bruce to inspect Thursday and then the room clear for Rick on Friday and then Saturday we’re moving the couches into the coffee shop room so I’ve got to get the shelves built soon.

Did I mention that Adrianna Trigiani’s novel about Big Stone Gap is being filmed here in town starting in two weeks? One of the film crew was in yesterday asking if the restaurant would open while they’re here. I said, “God knows, because I’ve got to put a bathroom in our basement this month or Wendy will kill me.” (We moved into our basement to clear space for the cafe, but women’s bladders are small and my wife has grown tired of making the midnight trek to the toilet one flight up.)

What was that dear? Shelves? What shelves?

To Boldly Go – – –

Posted on by
5

Jack’s weekly guest post –

 

Wendy and I were in Washington DC recently and, while she was attending to business, I got myself down to the air and space museum on the National Mall. It was the second time I’d been and the earlier visit some five years ago was of necessity brief. On this occasion I had three hours to spare and saw pretty much everything I’d missed last time.

I should explain here that I’m a sucker for anything to do with flying and have frittered away many hours of my life building model planes (the airborne variety).

Just inside the entrance to the museum sit many of the space exhibits, including the early capsules. I had never stood that close to one before, and I was astonished by what I saw. Here was a flimsy cone-shaped object barely bigger than the chair it enclosed, filled with very 1960s technology – toggle switches and dials that wouldn’t look out of place in a car of that era. A man sat in that thing and was shot into space, where he sailed along completely dependent on the calculations of colleagues sitting thousands of miles away. How on earth (ha!) could anyone do that?! Even the later moon landing vehicles aren’t all that much bigger, and still look incredibly fragile.

Carrying on through the museum I viewed the other machines, from the Wright Brothers’ famous Flyer through the early airliners and the first jet planes. The common thread was just how flimsy and ‘basic’ they all seemed. After visiting the museum, how anyone can get into a modern airliner without a pang of fear is beyond me.

So what connects the Wright brothers and their ilk to folk like Neil Armstrong? I can only presume that it’s complete confidence in the design of the craft that carries them and a sense that they’re breaking through a barrier – “to boldly go – – -”

Now, the odder question: what connects these space ramblings to our bookstore – apart from me indulging my love of flying machines?

We had a couple of visitors from Northern Virginia in the shop yesterday, market gardeners who are active in promoting community sustainability from the ground up (literally). While talking to them I suddenly got a picture in my mind of that famous photo of Earth taken by one of the astronauts from space. You all know the one I mean – with the beautiful greens and blues and all the continents in full view. If I remember correctly the astronaut was overcome by the sight and felt compelled to appeal to everyone back on the planet to take good care of it. An appeal to everyone!

So here’s to the brave people who got into those flimsy flying machines and soared, and here’s to the earthbound brave souls who hoe the rows in front of them. And here’s to keeping our beautiful, fragile Earth around for a few hundred more years?