The Roseledge Books Blog

The inaugural wearing of the very large, very soft, very warm big wooly sweater with very long sleeves and detached collar proved once again that strange knittings are very much better than no knittings. And as we sat, toasty on the porch with fizzy wine to celebrate the new job and general excellence of our kids, we noted the dramatic cool down with bugs once the sun set and we felt Fall. RB is a summer-only adventure which means that after twenty-five years, I can manage withdrawal pangs, but come January, longing hits and I look for anticipation reads or watches.

A RB reader mentioned that she chose to anticipate the summer visit with Linda Greenlaw’s Lobster Chronicles, a good choice and a sure voice of Maine. But we porch sitters began thinking about ocean/coastal/water films we knew and loved because, readers all, we decided that books are good but pictures are better.

Fig. #92. How about Friday night movies on the garage door? I could enlarge the driveway. At dusk, the peeled paint pock marks look like aging batik.

But which films? Local Hero and The Russian are Coming, The Russians are Coming were unanimous choices. The Shipping News was mentioned and The French Lieutenant’s Woman got a maybe. Errol Flynn’s pirate movies were too violent for one (Remember Captain Blood?) and Johnny Depp’s pirate movies too camp for another. Someone mention he new version of the Hornblower movies which drew a scoff from a Gregory Peck fan. No one had seen Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander. Whales of August and Weight of Water were possibles. Only one person had seen the new movie, Ghostwriter, but I can’t remember the comment which suggests the reviewer must have been asleep over the Atlantic when he saw it. Worth checking out, though. The second season of  The Wire is called “The Port” I think, but so far no one had seen more than one episode. Is Baltimore’s port enough water? Jane Austen’s Persuasion should have come up and didn’t. Suggestions welcome.

People of Maine who don’t die at sea or from a communicable disease live nearly forever. I base this finding on a cursory look at tombstones in the cemetery at the head of the Harbor. I think the secret is blueberries. They are so good, so at-hand, and so filled with antioxidants which are good for the heart, how could the finding be different? Seafood is good, too, and available, but not as free for the growing or picking on trails. Is molasses unrefined enough for the resulting doughnuts to be natural or organic? Time for lunch.

You’d better hurry. Labor Day is too close to dawdle.

Nearby newbies found Roseledge Books through this blog (RBb) which is such good news and a little bit magical.  The coast is so fraught with in’s and out’s, that finding anything as subtly advertised as RB seems like magic.  Remember last year when someone in a boat found RBb and recognized the East Wind Inn from the webcam, so knew just how to get here?  This matters because the walk from a dinghy tied up at the public landing has to take a jog right on 131 past  the Tenants Harbor General Store,  then join up with Sea Street by hypotenuse through the General Store driveway or by right angle right turn on Mechanic Street at the Post Office then 20 steps later, a right angle left turn onto Sea Street immediately in front of RB’s only sign, hanging on the corner maple tree.  Just so there can be no confusion, the sign has an arrow pointing up the hill to the left.  Surely finding RB without instruction is a kind of magic, but nifty newbies did.  And when they left, RB had its first best seller of the year, Bernd Heinrich’s The Snoring Bird.

Fig. #89. This old sign has been replaced by a handsome new sign which still says "Roseledge Books" and "open 2-6 p.m." with an arrow pointing left. But the tree is the same, across the road from the Sea Street street sign.

Then a former student (never an old student) commented, and now RB has another newbie to anticipate.  In a general answer to her specific question,  last I noticed, Noble Clay was still in Martinsville on the right on 131, about 4 miles beyond Tenants Harbor (and RB) on the road to Port Clyde.  Mars Hall Gallery, just a bit further on 131 on the right, typically has some pottery, too.  Beyond that, I’ll wait to talk of food and books and other things until you are here.  I’m (still) always good at having opinions.

Reading update: I liked Ian Rankin’s A Question of Blood and await Millie’s return with Steig Larsson’s third, Girl Who Kicked the Hornet‘s Nest, a treasure a friend picked up in paperback (British edition) while traveling through Zurich. RB won’t have it in paperback until the U.S. edition is printed, (probably) next year.  RB does have his first two: Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and Girl Who Played With Fire.  Meanwhile I’m reading and liking a lot Harry Dolan’s Bad Things Happen.  He was a philosophy major (as opposed to a philosopher).  So he knows how to parse a sentence, ask big question, cover all bases, and get to the point, says this one-time long ago philosophy major.  More when Ive read more.

Nothing beats the four o’clock off-shore breeze when the day is hot and sunny and sometimes humid.  I am presently sitting in its path, relishing the relief, and knowing this is absolutely the best place in the world to be.  Why aren’t you here?

HOT!  HOT!  Too hot to move, but just right to settle in with a wanted book waiting to be read, with the fan on medium between open doors.  Fortunately, Roseledge Books meets all of those requirements.  I chose Ian Rankin’s Exit Music and am remembering how much I like Rebus.  I’ve ordered a batch more for RB on the off chance another too-hot day comes and you and I will need a good read.  It sure beats grumping at the world.

But a sea breeze just kicked in and now is wafting through the window to my right as I sit at my computer.  So it is I was reading and found the Vanishing New York blog guy’s enlightened search for the diner in Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”. Reference librarian and  search lover that I am, I tried to think of any other “avenues” he might have checked but couldn’t think of any, didn’t know many that he tried, and had a very good time overall.  So being nearly finished with Exit Music, I sort of darted over to the shelves and nabbed David Grann’s Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession. I’m sure this is a search book, but I’m not sure if the search is for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold, or Percy Fawcett’s search  for it or both, but I love to travel with those who try to find out.  Hello, David Grann.

An aside: Obsession usually turns me off (Tracy Kidder’s Soul of a New Machine and John Casey’s Spartina come to mind) but when a search to find out is on, I think of it as focus.

Fig. #87. Think sea breeze and room for your dinghy at the public landing. Just a note: the port-a-pot up the hill is not intended for boaters, my friends who live close-by tell me.

Summer starts now, say those who count on tourists, and all the signs suggest it will be a good one.  Strawberries came so early they’re almost done, raspberries are here and first blueberries are being raked.  Good weather will do that.  Friends have been stopping by, one with a RB t-shirt from the henley days.  I’m still waiting for a RB t-shirt wearer to be accosted by another RB t-shirt wearer and have each end up with a good book to think about and a plan to return to RB.  Before t-shirts, one boating group came with my business card/bookmark given to them by another boating group  in the Caribbean.  That was fun and so will it be to see you.

Another aside: to capture the sea breeze from afar, check the webcam, refresh it four or five times, and watch the cut-leaf maple wave.  (I just tried this and the blueberry bush might be a surer mover.)

I love the morning paper, at least until something in it drives me nuts and it’s too early to call Charlie in Seattle. The case of “intellectual spousal abuse” was one too many somethings about people who should know better than to use the uncredited ideas of others and think it’s okay.

Something 1:
German teenager, Helene Hegemann, justified using parts of an uncredited work in her bestselling novel by saying that she “mixes and matches…across new and old media to create something new.“ She apologized for not being more open about her sources, but argued, “There’s no such thing as originality anyway, just authenticity.” Give me a break. Using is using, and using without crediting is wrong. Her novel has been nominated for the prestigious Leipzig Book Fair prize with a $20,000 award and one juror said that the jury was aware of the plagiarism charges, but said “I believe it’s part of the concept of the book.”

Figure 78. Mixing and matching...

Something 2:

Richard Prince, a “pioneer of Appropriation Art” (I’m not making this up), uses untouched, unacknowledged Marlboro photographs. When interviewed, photographer of the original, Jim Krantz, said, “I’m not…mean or… vindictive,… but I would like some “recognition” and “understanding.” Richard Prince would have none of it. “I never associated advertisements with having an author,” he said in an email. In 2005, one of Richard Prince’s “appropriated” Marlboro pictures sold for $1.2 million.

Something 2:

Something 3:
The author/spouse dies of old age. Then Dr. Harold Seymour is an inaugural inductee into the Society for American Baseball Research’s Hall of Fame because he authored a classic three volume work on the history of baseball, written from 1960-1990. His wife had been a partner in the effort from the beginning, but he never allowed her work to be co-credited with his, even — or maybe especially — when he had Alzheimer’s during the writing of the third volume. It was a time and she loved him. But when the Induction Committee orally acknowledged her assistance, it was not enough. So Dorothy Jane Mills, now 81, came forward and asked for due recognition. After a 48 hour deliberation, The SABR Hall of Fame committee awarded her co-inductee status. Finally.

Figure #79. ....does make a difference.

Something 4:
Comic book artist, Nick Simmons, declares his likesnesses to another comic an “homage,” never, according to a critical blogger, “flat-out copies.“ His publication has been discontinued.

Something 5.
Author Andre Aciman used the unacknowledged words of others in his novel. The book reviewer liked his writing and praised him accordingly. But the praised quote belonged to John Keats. Thus caught out, the unrepentant author speculated that the unattributed quote was “perhaps unbeknownst to [the] reviewer.” Oh my. Whatever happened to oh, say, quotation marks?

Why is giving credit where credit is due so difficult?

———————————————————————————————————————-

1: Kulish, Nicholas. “Author, 17,Says It’s ‘Mixing,‘ Not Plagiarism.” NYTimes, 2/12/2010.
2. Aciman, Andre. “Letters.” The New Yorker, 3/1/2010.
3.Randy Kennedy. “If The Copy Is An Artwork, Then What Is The Original?” NYTimes, 12/6/07.
4. “Arts Briefly,” NYTimes, 2/10/2010
5. Schwarz, Alan. “Straightening the Record,” NYTimes, 3/6/2010

———————————————————————————————————————–

End of rant.  Time to get on with smells of soggy, but visible grass and old leaves, and the exciting news that the latest Clare Ferguson/Russ Van Alstyne may be available.

Today is perfect. Public radio weather people say it may be the start of the best week of the summer. I am so-o-o ready. An unexpected pleasure, having lunch with my niece, nephew-in-law, and two greats up from Boston, just adds to everything else good. The guy who mows the lawn warned of invisible stingers, probably ground hornets, near the radically-pruned rose hedge which means that great-Alex will not be able to investigate the newly exposed rock wall. Maybe Bill and Danny rained the nest to death, but it’s hard to know for sure. The backyard mosses on ledge are hugely explorable, though.

Fig.#6 2.  Rock walls are always worth inspecting, especially when the outdoors beckons and a parent is ready to walk.

Kids are back in school today and yesterday was not Labor Day. Feels wrong or at least strange. NYTimes article, August 30, 2009, “The Future of Reading: A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like” is about reading choices for school kids and highlights the old questions: Will kids who choose Nancy Drew ever choose anything “better”? Will kids who read the prescribed classic ever read anything else? Food for added thought: Judge Sonja Sotomayor read Nancy Drew and Joe Queenan re-read Thomas Hardy not long ago and wrote about it in a NYTimes Book Review essay on June 3, 2007, titled “Summer Bummer.”

Personally, I prefer choices. Not many kids come to Roseledge, probably because they reach an age when time on a boat or time with parents is time taken away from something they think they’d rather do. But recently two nifty kids came with their mom and grandfolks, and we had a good time choosing. Well, I did. One liked the Twilight books, which I vaguely recalled dealt with vampires. She was willing to try the vampire book that started it all, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. She was also dog-lonesome, so she chose Joe Grogan’s Marley and Me, and it might have been Grandmom that tucked Jane Austen’s Persuasion (for the sea captain link to their being on a boat and in a bookstore that had lots of books about the sea — okay, it’s a stretch) in the resulting pile.

The slightly younger brother was not convinced that either Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped or Treasure Island was for him, even if he was on a boat and near islands, but he did admit to liking mysteries. So he decided to try a Joe Pickett mystery which means a Wyoming game warden detective tackles an environmental issue and family life with two kids. ( For example, C.J. Box’s Open Season.) But didn’t his eyes light up when he found Jefferson Bass’s The Devil’s Bones with maggot-infested bodies lying afield at the real Body Farm research facility in Tennessee and which feed the findings that they use on the tv shows, CSI. Grandmom took a look and said, “Good. Small print and lots of pages.” One suspects that sometimes time is long aboard and asea.

Fig.#63. The poplar leaves are dappling the sun which means it's about 2:30 and time to move from the shady side to the front deck.

Too few days left.  I’m reading and liking Nicholas Kilmer’s Madonna of the Apes,” an art mystery set in Boston during which so far Fred has spent one whole day at the Boston Public Library.  One of these summers, BPL will be more directly linked to Roseledge Books than through the memory of 7-year-old Charlie sound asleep in BPL’S baseball glove chair, as we passed a very hot night waiting for the morning bus to take us to Maine.