Travels with Books

Book Signing at Tannery Books: Death Watch

2012-02-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

Thanks to mystery author Dale Crotts, and everybody who came out Saturday for the book launch of his new thriller, Death Watch!

In case you missed it, he left a few signed copies of Death Watch, plus his first book, The Reckoning, here at the shop.

Movies and shows of 2011

2012-01-29T22:35:00.000-05:00

I don't have cable or satellite TV, so I stream series or movies to my computer through Netflix. I like to keep a record of what I've watched the past year because, like the books I read, this is the input I've put into my brain which helps fuel my thoughts and writing.

Lois and Clark (season 3)
The Devil Wears Prada
The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency (season 1)
Outsourced — An enjoyable look at cultural differences between America and India.
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
The Book of Eli — One of those movies with a great twist that makes you want to watch it again, immediately.
Eat Pray Love
A Room With a View — I liked this in college and wanted to see it again.
84, Charing Cross Road — And then I went to England!
Avatar — I liked it.
Forbidden Planet (1956)
An Education
The Millionairess (Sophia Loren, Peter Sellers)
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Thomas Crown Affair (Steve McQueen, 1968)
The Jane Austen Book Club
Despicable Me — Very funny!!
Roswell (seasons 1, 2 and 3) — My naughty indulgence last summer was to watch this all the way through.
The King's Speech — I didn't know this bit of history, which made some items I have in the bookshop more significant.
Carribean (1952)
Possession
Soul Surfer
Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow) — Not bad, but the characters seemed so different from the A&E version that I have now have trouble picturing them in my head. I had to go read the book. It didn't help.
The Cowboy and the Lady (Gary Cooper, 1938)
Alfie (Jude Law) — Not a happy movie.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season 1 and part of season 2) — I stopped for the same reason I stopped watching the original series: I knew it was going to get darker and darker and, unlike Roswell, the characters would never find happiness.
Toy Story 3 — (I haven't see Toy Story 2, yet)
Happy Accidents — I really liked this movie, the kind that makes you think and re-watch parts. I didn't know who Vincent D'Onofrio was (yes, I live under a rock). Caution: lots of foul language.
Here Comes the Groom (Bing Crosby)
Food, Inc. — If not completely life-changing, this documentary at least makes you think about where your food comes from and what you're eating.
Tangled
Signs of Life — Fascinated by Vincent D'Onofrio (but not a fan of police TV), I found this 1989 movie.

I forgot to list the one time I went to a theater; I think it was late summer or early fall. I watched Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides.

Hardtack

2012-01-25T07:41:00.002-05:00

I have the nicest customers at the bookshop.

I told one of them about the food soldiers ate in colonial times. He's more interested in the Civil War, and had ordered some "authentic" hardtack. He promised to bring me a taste.

And he did!

He insisted I wait and eat it with strong coffee. The soldiers would have boiled their coffee and drank it with grounds in their cups.

A box costs quite a bit, so he gave me one of the large crackers. I took it home and divided it with my family.

We brewed some regular coffee, since that's all we had.

It tasted a lot like a saltine, maybe a little more flour-y. We all agreed that it would taste pretty good if you're a hungry soldier on the march, but we wouldn't want to eat it all the time.

Vintage books in Thomasville

2012-01-22T20:31:00.000-05:00

A customer told me about a library booksale in progress. I had never been to the one in Thomasville and didn't have high expectations, but I decided to squeeze in a trip on Saturday morning, when they had their best bargains.

When I walked into their conference-turned-booksale room, I wondered if I had wasted a trip. The tables looked to be filled with moderns and old texts that didn't look very interesting.

I swept around the room. Finally, a side table full of biographies sparked my interest. I found Old Books, Rare Friends, a bookseller memoir I've been seeking. Maybe this wasn't a wasted trip, after all. I picked up another biography, but I was proud of myself for the ones I put back. I'm slowly learning to be more selective.

I went back and looked carefully through the long tables, gleaning a few vintage hardbacks with dustjackets.

One fun title was Pilgrims in Paradise, starring "the Puritan and the temptress." Oh, those lusty Puritans! I shouldn't laugh — someone has probably written steamy romances about Quakers, right? *grin*

Look! Librarian with Wings — could anything be more appropriate for me?

The Books of 2011

2012-01-18T13:57:00.000-05:00

I didn't get much writing done (except during nanowrimo!) in 2011, but I feel like I devoured books. Let me count them up and see.

Books I read completely:
1. Shelf Life - Memoir set in a bookstore. OK, but it didn't live up to the promises on the cover.
2. Dewey - A library adopts a stray cat. Wonderful and well-written memoir.
3. Quaker Homespuns, 1655-1833 - An earlier historian's short stories about some of the same people I'm writing my novel about.
4. Mr. Midshipman Hornblower

Reading at the beach!

5. Midsummer Night in the Workhouse - Literary short stories. I feel expanded.
6. The Preacher's Bride - Historical inspirational fiction similar to what I want to write.
7. Sea Change - A Jesse Stone mystery. I enjoyed the straight-forward, masculine prose.
8. Hash - Quirky! Umm... you had to be there.
9. Emma - I had seen two different movie versions and wanted to read the book.
10. Persuasion - Much more mature work than Emma.
11. Daughters of the Witching Hill - Excellent historical with just enough vernacular and lots of details to pull you into the story.
12. No Plot? No Problem! - Encouraging and practical (especially in November!)
13. One Second After - Everybody should read this book. Everybody! Realistic story of a small town cut off from supplies and communication after a U.S. national disaster. Hard to put down.

Children's books:
Indian Two Feet and His Eagle Feather
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
Your Personal Penguin
14. Gift of the Magi
The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
(A Thomas the Train book, I don't remember the title)

I read lots of articles, but here are two I wrote down:
"Why I Write" by George Orwell, 1947
"From A Soldier's Wife," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1864 (622-628)

Books I read parts of:
15. (finished) Arctic Ireland - history research for my novel
The Daily Writer - great writing prompts
Writing the Christian Romance - ditto
English Social History (yawn)
The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel Chronicles, Vol. I
Charity Cook: A Liberated Woman - history research for my novel, but not as specific as I'd hoped.
Eating Well for Optimum Health - seriously educational; I read about half and may read more.

So, 15. I added four that I'd forgotten to write down, so maybe I missed others. Or maybe I didn't read as much as I thought I did. In 2010, I read about 20 books. In 2009, I read 7 in entirety, and started several others that I finished the following year.

This year, I don't have a reading list. I've researched my book the last few years and now's the time to finish it. At the moment, I'm staying away from similar books until I get my third draft finished, because I don't want to accidentally copy anything. I will continue to read lots of articles, writing books and nonfiction. When I need a break, I'll pick up some "mindless" entertainment in other genres, like mysteries.

The Little Bookseller

2012-01-16T18:03:00.001-05:00

Those of you who "like" Tannery Books' Facebook page know that I had an "assistant bookseller" for a couple of days.

My 4-year-old great-nephew Aidan helped me put away the Christmas tree and I assigned him to the window display. I had borrowed a little snowman and started pulling winter-themed books. Aidan informed me that we needed more kids' books, and he proceeded to fill the display with Dr. Seuss, The Berenstein Bears, and Star Wars. He finished the display all by himself, and did a great job!

Of course, when you're 4, all work and no play make for a dull day. We adopted the philosophy of work-a-little, play-a-little. He played with his new toys while I listed books, and our agenda included an afternoon game of hide-and-seek among the bookshelves (I had no idea my one-room shop had so many hidey places!). And of course, we had to read a few books.

When Nana came to pick him up after work, she was amazed that we hadn't pulled out any of his electronic games 'til after 4 p.m. Even better, the next morning he picked up his packed lunch and told Nana he had "to go to work."

My new apprentice chose classic Dr. Seuss and Thomas the Train for his paycheck. Excellent taste, I must say.

Eureka! Goals for 2012

2012-01-08T08:32:00.001-05:00

I was so busy in 2010, I didn't write down my goals until June. Last year, I didn't write down any at all; 2011 was like riding a tidal wave. That's not to say I didn't accomplish anything. I opened a bookstore, started a new job as assistant archivist in the Friends Historical Collection, went to England, researched my ancestors in South Carolina, and wrote 50,000 words in a month during nanowrimo. I also hurt my back, which still slows me down, lost two members of my extended family and have two more in and out of the hospital. The year was full of trials and blessings.

My main goal for 2012 was to have goals, so I can focus. I like Robert Lee Brewer's 2012 list, which includes both writing and personal goals. I sat down with pen and notebook, intent on making my own list.

And I was overwhelmed.

I've been pulled so many different directions — work, volunteering (too much), family, health — I knew my list could be too long to be helpful.

I turned the page to a blank one and thought: What if I could do anything I wanted in the coming year? I jotted down three things. I looked at those three things and had a light-bulb moment. That was my list! I felt as if a burden had been lifted off me.

Path at Woodbrooke in England

1. Finish my novel.
2. Reconcile with an estranged friend.
3. Find our Maness ancestor.

Work, survival, family crises — the "shoulds" in my life will happen. I'll do the things I have to do. Part of me said, I should work on my relationship with God, I should pay off bills, I should spend more time with family. Well, my little list is simple, and it's not.

I consider that novel my ministry and writing my gift, which makes it important. Reconciling is what God tells us to do. And that missing ancestor? That's a project I work on with my uncle, who is very sick. Time is running out.

Accomplishing those three things would not only make me happy, but also fit into the bigger picture.

A tribute to Shakespeare and Company

2011-12-19T16:53:00.001-05:00

Shakespeare and Company in Paris is an icon among booksellers and bibliophiles. Its owner for decades, George Whitman, passed away last week, 14 Dec. 2011, at age 98. My bibliophile friends sent me a link to a movie about life in the bookshop:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5574284408427118756

(Note: YouTube has this video in piecemeal. The Google link above is the entire 52-minute documentary.)

I'm not sure where the original S&C (also in Paris) starts and this continuation S&C begins, but one of them started hosting writers in the early 20th century, including Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. George Whitman either started or kept up that tradition and invited all kinds of people to stay in the bookshop in exchange for work. The movie above shows the bohemian life of writers and backpackers who actually move books out of the way at night and sleep and live in the shop.

Ironically, the first time I heard about Shakespeare and Co. was from its namesake, a bookshop in Kernersville, NC, which I visited in 2009. The owner has gradually switched over from coffee and books to wine and kitchen supplies and, as of last week, no longer sells books.

What Soldiers Ate: A Trip to the Past - Part 6

2011-12-18T13:52:00.000-05:00

The daily rations for a British soldier were:
     1 lb. flour or bread
     1 lb. pork or beef
     7 oz. peas
     1 oz. rice
     1 1/2 tbsp. butter
     1 1/2 tbsp. vinegar
   1 gill of rum

Vinegar? Yes, soldiers considered vinegar very important and became disgruntled if they didn't get it. People didn't know about germs in the 18th century, but they considered vinegar a "cleansing" agent — meaning it was good for the digestive system. In modern terms, they used it to purify their drinking water. The vitamin C in vinegar also prevented scurvy.

The British transported meat preserved in brine from Ireland. Sometimes it wasn't very palatable by the time the troops got it.

Soldiers didn't get rations on a daily basis, and it wouldn't be very practical for every soldier to be making bread every day. About six soldiers, who shared a tent, were called a "mess." Each mess assigned one man to do the cooking, and he picked up the rations for all of them once a week.

See the little silver cup at the top of the picture? That's a gill, a common measurement in colonial times. I think of it as a large shot glass.

The American troops had less (except in the vinegar department). Each soldier in Washington's army received the following per day:
     1 lb. bread
     1/2 lb. pork or beef
     1 pint milk or a gill of rice
     1 gill peas or beans
     6 oz. butter
     1/2 pint vinegar

Of course, that was when the army had food.

A Lesson in Herbs: A Trip to the Past - Part 5

2011-12-11T21:53:00.001-05:00

Colonists knew all about herbs and spices, not only for flavouring food, but also for cures and tonics. Two ladies in the "British camp" gave a lesson on their uses.

For example, yarrow was used to dye clothing. Tobacco was applied to stings, and house leeks (I call these hens and bitties) were good for burns. All kinds of things were made into teas, including mint and chamomile. Some teas were made to cure ills and some were merely cheaper alternatives to imported black tea.

Spices were ground up with a mortar and pestle (I still use a small one) and nutmeg was grated. Sugar came in a "loaf" or cone wrapped in paper.

I didn't realize they had cough lozenges, back then. The apothecary made it with licorice and put his stamp on each lozenge. Pieces of candy, made from anise, peppermint or tamarind, were called comfits.

The colonists used plenty of salt. Before canning came along, people preserved food by drying it, smoking it, or putting it in brine. Meat might be layered in coarse salt — no need to grind it for preserving food.

I learned another thing. We feel like our world has recently gone global because of the information age. But American colonists lived in a new global market because of sea trade. Sugar, spices, rum and salt were all imported.

Wordless Wednesday: A Trip to the Past - Part 4

2011-12-07T00:14:00.002-05:00

Camden, S.C.

Camden: A Trip to the Past - Part 3

2011-12-04T22:23:00.003-05:00

Saturday I went to the Revolutionary War re-enactment at Camden. I was particularly interested in details about how people lived in that time period, like food and clothing. Encampment participants had tents and campfires; one man tied fish to a board to smoke it by his campfire. A woman was cleaning pumpkin seeds to toast. She was going to stuff the pumpkin with chopped apples and roast it on her fire, which sounded yummy.

The Kershaw house was open for self-tours. The present building was built in 1976-77 on the original brick foundation, a replica based on archaeology and photographs. Joseph Kershaw, a patriot, was a successful merchant who built much of original Camden, and his 18th-century mansion overlooked the town. While the Revolutionary War left most of Camden in ashes — including the Fredericksburgh (Quaker) meeting house — the Kershaw house escaped destruction because General Cornwallis used it for his southern headquarters.

After Independence, Camden was rebuilt to the north, on higher ground. The cemetery, the historical centre (around the house) and remains of the magazine and redoubts remain on the site of the early town. Ironically, the Kershaw house was burned in 1865 during the Civil War.

"Soldiers" acted out skirmishes on the Green, in front of the Cornwallis house. (I tried to share a video, but it's too large for blogger so here are a couple of photos.)

Interruptions and Accomplishments

2011-11-27T01:13:00.002-05:00

We interrupt these colonial era posts for a brief announcement from NaNoWriMo:

I won!

Now for another trip, this one in the present (not back in time), followed by somewhat-regularly scheduled blogging in December.

Thank you.

A Trip to the Past - Part 2

2011-11-21T17:00:00.001-05:00

Friday I drove over to Camden with the vague goal of finding some original documents that Cousar had referenced in his book. One of them mentioned Edward Flin. My ancestor Thomas English married Margaret Flynn (or Flinn), daughter of Edward and Ann, who was "a cousin of Lord Cornwallis." I have not yet found Ann's maiden name or how exactly she was related to the British general, nor have I found anything about her and Edward, including their deaths, except for the land record where they first arrived in South Carolina from Ireland.

I started in the Register of Deeds office. Unlike library archives, they didn't mind if I took pictures, which helped speed up note-taking.

Yes, this is how I spend my vacations!

I found some land records with Englishes in them, and other names in early Camden that are starting to become familiar to me. But I didn't find the book of "Pleadings and Judgments, Book F" that I was looking for. The lady at the counter told me that this building was for Camden records, and I need to go across the street for Kershaw County records.

After going through the metal detector at the courthouse and asking very nicely for photography permission, I walked back through the cold wind to the car and got my camera. The office for intestate (no will) cases is upstairs and the testate records are downstairs. The old books were jumbled around, but I finally found Book F.

And there was the record! A lovely case of two generations who died without a will — the granddaughter's husband wanted to buy the land, so his case included the death dates of Edward and Ann Flin, the names of their children (Margaret and Jean), their grandchildren (Margaret and Thomas English's children), Jean and Thomas' death dates, and more details.

Oh, and Edward was a blacksmith. A primary document with many of my colonial family members and their connections in it — Wonderful stuff!

A Trip to the Past - Part 1

2011-11-20T16:40:00.001-05:00

The first week in November I took a trip back in time.

Actually, I took the camper down to South Carolina to attend a Revolutionary War re-enactment in Camden. My ancestors lived in Camden, during the Revolutionary War — I had to go! This was a perfect opportunity to glimpse what their lives would have been like.

I took a few extra days to research my English family. Thursday I went to the South Caroliniana collection at the University of South Carolina. I wanted to find two sources that books on the English family had referenced: John Cousar's book, Quaker Turned Presbyterian, and Elisabeth Doby English's Descendants of Joshua English. I was excited to finally see them with my own eyes. The former turned out to be a book and the latter was a manuscript.

The South Caroliniana Collection

You can't take pictures of documents in the collection, and I wished I could have taken Cousar's whole book home, there was so much information in it! I wrote notes like crazy and was quickly overwhelmed. The book has paper covers and looks like something that would have had a small print run (i.e. not easy to find a copy).

English's book was more of an extensive family tree, and I took some notes and decided to order copies of the pages with my part of the family, and the branches that lived in the area near the time of the Revolution.

I looked at a few microfilms and then ran out of time. Since parking is difficult at USC and I found the two books that were my goals, I decided to spend tomorrow researching in Camden.

'Murder' at the bookshop

2011-10-31T23:11:00.000-04:00

A little bookstore décor from October

My "dead guy" turned a few heads as people passed by the shop.

On Oct. 22, Karen McCollough signed her latest mystery at Tannery Books.

The Search for Thomas Maness — Which Way Next?

2011-10-31T00:11:00.001-04:00

I'm having so many genealogy brainstorms I feel like my mind's about to short out.

First, to wrap up my last post: I found the Brady family book in Asheboro, with information about Sarah Brady, Swain Maness' last wife, which I followed up back home with a death record and obituary. Sarah not only outlived Swain Maness, she remarried, had more children, and lived until 1964. I had never been able to find Sarah Maness because she had become Sarah Jones!

Oh, remember that real estate ad I printed out, where their daughter Cora Brown lived? The address on Sarah's death certificate seemed familiar, so I flipped through my notebook. Yes, she died at her daughter's house. A serendipitous find became a nice corroboration to prove that I had found the right woman.

Now, back to those brainstorms. I have so many directions to go next, with none of them a really strong lead. But at least I have possibilities — instead of facing a brick wall, it's more like driving on a double-highway cloverleaf with too many exits. I just don't know which ones might lead me to a dead end or a rabbit trail.

1. Through census records and the obituary, I learned that Sarah and Swain had another daughter, Oppie. I found out who she married, but I'm not sure if it's worth looking for descendants. Remember, Ms. Myrtle would be their cousin, and she told me that her grandmother lost everything in a house fire.

2. I learned last month that Swain's sister Lundy Jane had descendants (his brothers died in or as a result of the Civil War), and many of them live in Randolph County (not far). So many I don't know where to start. My only hope would be to find a genealogist in the family, or someone who has old pictures.

3. Looking back through last year's e-mails, I caught the name of another wife, possibly Swain's first wife (married in 1866). Census records indicate they had three children, including two boys. My next step is to look for descendants. If a male line descendant exists, his DNA would give us crucial information.

4. I've learned just enough about DNA to be dangerous — I've been ignoring the smaller marker matches because the odds say those people might be related to us in the past 1,000 years, while I'm looking for someone just four generations back. I don't want to contact all these random people that may have no connection. However, two names keep coming up in the medium marker matches: Hooks and Vance. (On the theory that our ancestor either lied about his surname or had an illegitimate parentage) I plan to contact them and see if they have any useful information.

I drew up a chart of Swain's family because I had information overload and needed to see things. I used a highlighter to trace branches that had come up as DNA matches with each other. What I learned, from this visual family tree, was that the man with whom we originally compared our DNA is definitely in the Maness family — no unknown illegitimacy among his "known" ancestors. But neither Swain, nor his father Henry, have had any descendants tested.

5. Our Thomas Maness said he was from Arkansas, and wrote on his marriage license that his parents were George and Mary and he was from Moore County. There was a George Maness in the Union Calvary in Arkansas. I am trying to find information about him and his family.

6. And a final wild hair thought: Some branches of the Maness family went to Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. Of the DNA "matches" so far, only a few people have posted a family tree. I clicked on several of these (men with other surnames, that is) and most of them had ancestors from Tennessee, and Kentucky, and Arkansas. While I'm not keen to contact them just yet — that's a broad geographic area, after all — I think I'll draw another chart, with locations and years, and see if any more bright ideas come to me.

I needed to jot these ideas down, especially since I'm switching gears in November. It's back to research on the English family, but this time, during the Revolutionary War.

Looking for the dead, and the living, and the dead

2011-10-23T22:21:00.001-04:00

The past few months I've been chipping away at that brick wall surrounding my great-great grandfather, Thomas S. Maness. One theory is that he is Thomas McSwain "Swain" Maness of Moore County, N.C., but my uncle's DNA didn't match up with someone who had a common ancestor with Swain Maness. We haven't given up, however, because so many clues point to this man.

I made a couple of trips to Asheboro to look at a Maness family book, and I called the author and asked him a few questions. As it turns out, it's one of those perpetual family books — he keeps writing it and adding pages as he finds things out. So by calling him, I found out the name of Swain's daughter by his last (possibly fifth) wife. Better yet, her married name — Cora Brown.

DNA testing requires a straight male line or a female line. But I keep hoping that Swain's descendants, no matter what gender, might have a photo of him to compare with the tintype that we have of Thomas. I found Cora and her family on the census, then her death certificate. The library borrowed microfilm of the newspaper in that area, and voilà! Cora's obituary listed her three daughters (with married names) and where they lived in 1994.

Before I ordered the obituary, I did an online search for the address on Cora's and her husband's death certificates, to verify the area for the right newspaper. I actually found a photo of her house, for sale on a realty site. Just for the serendipity of it, I printed it out.

For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings blog challenged us to use Spokeo.com to search for ourselves. I plugged in my name, as suggested, and got my correct age range, an old address, and it said that my late mother lived with me. We haven't lived together since I went to college. Interesting.

I plugged in the names of Cora's daughters. They should be up in years, but one of them was listed in her 40s. That can't be right, I thought. But the other one, mid-80s, was in a hopeful location compared to the obituary. I opened up my home page at yahoo.com and put her name and city in the white pages, which gave me a phone number and street address. Ah! I thought, one page (like Spokeo) may not give out all kinds of personal information, but putting several things together — obituary, search site, phone book — can lead to real live people!

I called Ms. Lessie and briefly explained my research. At the last instant, I remembered to be tactful — my family has been chuckling for years about this possible ancestor who married many women (without benefit of divorce or death between them), but here was his family, and they might not know those things. She confirmed that her grandfather was a Maness and a civil war veteran (yes!), but referred me to her older sister for more information.

I then called Ms. Myrtle, who is 89 and sharp as a tack (and matched the address of the woman listed in her 40s). Yes, her grandfather was Swain Maness. But no, they didn't know much about him. He died long before they were born. Unfortunately, her grandmother's house (Sarah Brady Maness) burned down, and she didn't think they ever had any pictures or birth certificates or anything like that. That news was a disappointment, but Ms. Myrtle gave me one more tidbit.

I had never found anything on Sarah Brady (census, death), who was rumored to have preceded Swain in death. Myrtle told me that she was mentioned in a book a relative of hers wrote about the Brady family. She read me the title and the authors, and I looked it up online.

There was a copy in Asheboro.

Writer Wednesday Update

2011-10-19T22:49:00.000-04:00

Catching up on recent writerly and bookish events...

I volunteered again this year at Writers' Police Academy, Sept. 23-24. I didn't get the awesome, behind-the-scenes photos like last year (part 1 and especially part 2 here), but you can check out Lee Lofland's blog for a write-up on this year's action: Friday and Saturday (fake gore alert!).

Between helping "recruits" find their way around and running errands, I witnessed a hostage situation, listened to Marco Conelli talk about life as a New York undercover cop, and my writer buddies and I got a real "kick" out of Corporal Dee Jackson's personal safety class. Despite fighting an early fall cold and mild fever (another reason for fewer photos), I enjoyed Lee's night-owl session and the banquet with guest speaker Chris Reich. One of my favorite parts is networking with other writers, both new "recruits" and people I met last year.

About two weeks ago, one of my customers called me just before I left the bookshop and said, "Of course, you're going to the library sale tomorrow, aren't you?"

"Tomorrow?!" Although I fuss at the nice FOL volunteers for not putting out any electronic publicity, they seem quite happy with just putting a sign in their yard and inviting members.

Although very strapped for cash, I couldn't resist. I stayed away from ex-libs this time and still came home with some nice finds.

Fashion through the centuries

A genealogy of airplanes to 1954

1898 pocket-sized Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing

My best find was probably this 1883 music book of basic music instruction, folk songs and rounds, hymns, and The Star Spangled Banner. One song contains instructions for when students should bang on their desks. The book includes a page of Useful Advice, such as: Don't talk or laugh loudly when you first go outside into the cold air. Don't sleep with heat that's pumped up from a cellar.

That same afternoon, I went to Jennifer Hudson Taylor's book launch for Highland Sanctuary at Barnes & Noble in Greensboro. (Yay, Jennifer!)

We met through Facebook and Twitter because we have inspirational historical writing and other topics in common. For example, Jennifer has written a historical Quaker novella, set where I currently work part-time, to come out as part of a collection in 2012.

This was probably the first time I ever met one of my "tweeps" in person! I got an autographed copy of Highland Blessings, her first book, so I can start at the beginning of the series.

Here are Jennifer's photos of her book signing (Facebook page).

A Day in the Archives

2011-09-21T19:59:00.000-04:00

I love my job! I've worked part-time as an assistant archivist in the Friends Historical Collection since January. There have been a variety of tasks to do — from genealogical look-ups to transcribing old handwriting to inventorying old meeting minutes (church records) for an Ancestry.com scanning project. Here's what I did Tuesday.

First I emptied the dehumidifiers in the "vault" or stacks. It makes me nervous to carry a container full of about two gallons of water (that's half a day of our humid North Carolina air) past old records and paintings, so I walk very, very carefully.

I continued checking a typescript of Isham Cox's journal. We're preparing documents like this to put online. Not only did I get to use my picky copyediting skills, I also got to read the whole journal, which started in 1865. Cox made many trips around North Carolina and Virginia to help Quaker men who had been conscripted (drafted), and then imprisoned for refusing to fight. I enjoyed the language almost as much as the stories. For example, Cox used nominative "thou" (not "thee") in his letters, as many Quakers still did, and called a train "the Cars."

Then I pulled on some gloves and unfolded a quilt that was made circa 1938. Each square was stitched with a pattern of names, several recognizably from the Greensboro area. I laid the quilt out on one of the research tables and stood on a step-stool to photograph each square. Then my coworker and a docent held the quilt up in the hallway so I could take a picture of the whole thing.

A package of minutes had arrived from one of the meetings in North Carolina. I opened up the database and entered the dates, then typed the name and address into a form letter to send back as a receipt. I placed the papers in an archival folder and labeled it, ready to file in the vault when I return in the morning.

The Day the World Changed

2011-09-11T21:29:00.000-04:00

I didn't want to jump into the September 11 hype. As a matter of fact, I couldn't watch much of it on TV back when it happened. I missed a lot of the painful details back then because I couldn't stand the constant replaying of the same scenes over and over. I would just cut off the TV and get my news from coworkers and friends. But it has been 10 years, and I appreciate the posts, mentions, and events that honor those who were lost or involved and the memories that connect us all.

After reading other blogs and Facebook posts all day, I saw that Rachelle Gardner had offered a place on her blog for memories in 100 words or less. I decided to add my condensed memory to the mix, after reading all 77 of the other memories. And as a writer, I need to write down my view of what happened that day. I've put it off long enough.

I was driving off a Navy base, 2 hours from the Pentagon, for a car appointment when I heard about the second plane on the radio. As I watched the news at the auto shop, I prayed, “Don’t evacuate.” Thousands of people worked on the base, on a peninsula with one road out. But we thought we were next – they evacuated. I didn’t want to be a sitting duck in all that traffic, so I met a friend and we stayed in a restaurant all afternoon. Two days later we heard from a coworker who survived at the Pentagon.

Without the word limit, I would add one more thing. That base had a lot of civilians on it, and we were evacuated. Our military coworkers stayed. They were suddenly on duty round the clock, flying over our heads to protect us all in the weeks to come.

Genealogy Life - 104 things

2011-09-11T16:23:00.002-04:00

Thanks to Sheri at The Educated Genealogist for this meme. The items in bold green are things I've already done, italic red items are things I want to do but haven't yet, and black are things I don't care about (or don't know much about yet).

I changed no. 100 from an Indiana library to something I really want to do, and added no. 104. A few of the items would have turned green if they didn't say "with the internet" or "online." The internet is a wonderful resource, but I started researching my family 20 years ago, when that resource wasn't widely available. I like to travel, and I still find the best clues by using the internet for prep, then visiting places in person whenever possible.

104 Genealogy Things

1. Belong to a genealogical society

2. Joined a group on Genealogy Wise.

3. Transcribed records.

4. Uploaded headstone pictures to Find-A-Grave or a similar site

5. Documented ancestors for four generations (self, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents)

6. Joined Facebook.

7. Cleaned up a run-down cemetery.

8. Joined the GeneaBloggers Group.

9. Attended a genealogy conference.

10. Lectured at a genealogy conference.

11. Spoke on a genealogy topic at a local genealogy society/local library’s family history group.

12. Joined the National Genealogical Society.

13. Contributed to a genealogy society publication.

14. Served on the board or as an officer of a genealogy society.

15. Got lost on the way to a cemetery (I failed to find one cemetery, but I always knew where I was).

16. Talked to dead ancestors.

17. Researched outside the state in which I live.

18. Knocked on the door of an ancestral home and visited with the current occupants.

19. Cold called a distant relative.

20. Posted messages on a surname message board.

21. Uploaded a gedcom file to the internet.

22. Googled my name (and those of ancestors)

23. Performed a random act of genealogical kindness.

24. Researched a non-related family, just for the fun of it.

25. Have been paid to do genealogical research.

26. Earn a living (majority of income) from genealogical research (As a freelancer, no. As an archivist, yes).

27. Wrote a letter (or email) to a previously unknown relative (not sure, I may have done this years ago).

28. Contributed to one of the genealogy carnivals.

29. Responded to messages on a message board.

30. Was injured while on a genealogy excursion (thankfully not, but my pants took a beating from climbing over cemetery gates!).

31. Participated in a genealogy meme.

32. Created family history gift items.

33. Performed a record lookup.

34. Took a genealogy seminar cruise.

35. Am convinced that a relative must have arrived here from outer space.

36. Found a disturbing family secret.

37. Combined genealogy with crafts (family picture quilt, scrapbooking).

38. Think genealogy is a passion and/or obsession not a hobby.

39. Assisted finding next of kin for a deceased person.

40. Taught someone else how to find their roots.

41. Lost valuable genealogy data due to a computer crash or hard drive failure.

42. Been overwhelmed by available genealogy technology.

43. Know a cousin of the 4th degree or higher.

44. Disproved a family myth through research.

45. Got a family member to let you copy photos.

46. Used a digital camera to “copy” photos or records.

47. Translated a record from a foreign language.

48. Found an immigrant ancestor’s passenger arrival record.

49. Looked at census records on microfilm, not on the computer.

50. Used microfiche.

51. Visited the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

52. Used Google+ for genealogy.

53. Visited a church or place of worship of one of your ancestors.

54. Taught a class in genealogy.

55. Traced ancestors back to the 18th Century.

56. Traced ancestors back to the 17th Century.

57. Traced ancestors back to the 16th Century.

58. Can name all of your great-great-grandparents (not without looking at my records).

59. Know how to determine a soundex code without the help of a computer.

60. Have found many relevant and unexpected articles on internet to “put flesh on the bones” (I've found them in other places).

61. Own a copy of Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Shown Mills.

62. Helped someone find an ancestor using records you had never used for your own research.

63. Visited the main National Archives building in Washington, DC.

64. Have an ancestor who came to America as an indentured servant (yes, but no proof yet).

65. Have an ancestor who fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 or Civil War (looking for proof).

66. Taken a photograph of an ancestor’s tombstone.

67. Can “read” a church record in Latin.

68. Have an ancestor who changed his/her name, just enough to be confusing.

69. Joined a Rootsweb mailing list.

70. Created a family website.

71. Have a genealogy blog.

72. Was overwhelmed by the amount of family information received from someone.

73. Have broken through at least one brick wall.

74. Done genealogy research at a court house.

75. Borrowed microfilm from the Family History Library

76. Found an ancestor in an online newspaper archive (not online, but I've found on microfilms).

77. Have visited a NARA branch.

78. Have an ancestor who served in WWI or WWII (uncles, but not direct).

79. Use maps in my genealogy research.

80. Have a blacksheep ancestor.

81. Found a bigamist amongst my ancestors (still trying to prove).

82. Attended a genealogical institute.

83. Taken online genealogy (and local history) courses (again, not online).

84. Consistently (document) and cite my sources.

85. Visited a foreign country (i.e. one I don’t live in) in search of ancestors.

86. Can locate any document in my research files within a few minutes.

87. Have an ancestor who was married four times (trying to prove).

88. Made a rubbing of an ancestor’s gravestone.

89. Followed genealogists on Twitter.

90. Published a family history book (but I've published a book of indexed records).

91. Offended a family member with my research.

92. Reunited someone with precious family photos or artifacts (sweet!).

93. Have a paid subscription to a genealogy database.

94. Submitted articles for FamilySearch Wiki.

95. Organized a family reunion.

96. Converted someone new to the love of all things genealogy.

97. Have done the genealogy happy dance.

98. Visited the DAR Library in Washington D.C.

99. Have done indexing for Family Search Indexing or another genealogy project.

100. Visited the Haverford and Swarthmore Quaker collections in Pennsylvania (maybe spring 2012!).

101. Had an amazing serendipitous find of the "Psychic Roots" variety.

102. Visited the Library of Congress.

103. Belong to a lineage society
104. Visited a living history museum or participated in a re-enactment to get insight into an ancestor's life.

Getting ready for Bush Hill

2011-09-09T23:30:00.000-04:00

It's time, again, for our annual Bush Hill Heritage Festival. This is our local street festival, which started as the bicentennial celebration of our little Quaker village, Bush Hill, which later became Archdale. The past few years I've worn several "hats" at the festival, but primarily worked in the booth of my employer, the Archdale-Trinity News. This year is my first as a bookshop owner, and I'm hoping to get some traffic from the crowds. My shop isn't right on the street, but it's less than a block away and I'm sure festival-goers will use our parking lot.

Through the years, the festival has incorporated different events to celebrate history, but I don't know of any going on this year except the quilt show over at the Hammond-Ragan house. So I'm bringing out all the local history I can find for the bookshop this month.

First, I got Quaker notecards and postcards, plus a newly published book of first-hand recollections about the Civil War and Reconstruction by Mary Mendenhall Hobbs, who lived in New Garden (Greensboro) during that time.

This morning I picked up several publications from the Randolph County Genealogical Society to sell on commission. They include an 1894 Business Directory, Early Randolph County Marriages, Cemetery Records (New Market and Trinity townships), and an 1820 tax list.

I already had a few Friends meeting histories, Quaker books and a High Point history. This afternoon, someone brought in High Point Trivia and an Archdale history — perfect! I started to put them both out, but realized the Archdale history is a hard-to-find first edition, so I'll need to research it first (or maybe keep it...).

I laid the books out on an old quilt that belonged to my mom.

My cousin and her husband helped me move some things between the shop and home (Thank you!). For the final touch, I put my circa-1816 spinning wheel in the store window.

(not the best photo, but in case I don't get around to posting a better one)

I came home, made something for our bake sale at the meeting house (another "hat"), and now I'm ready for some sleep. The excitement begins in just a few hours!

Organizing Genealogy - But Why?

2011-08-27T08:08:00.003-04:00

Recently I walked out the door and met myself coming in. That's how I felt two weeks ago when I realized I'd just looked through the same books at the library for the same information that I had already looked for last year. Uh-oh. Time to get organized.

I found a binder, bought some slide-in protectors, and filed what I had about Thomas Maness and that family line. Then I started plugging information into Reunion on my desktop computer — still a work in progress. I not only need to figure out what I've done to keep from doing it again, but putting the pieces of the puzzle I have together will help me figure out where to look next.

This past week, several genealogy bloggers have written about organization. One blogger mentioned a rented storage unit, environmentally controlled, full of ancestral research! (And my friends think I'm a genealogy nut.) These folks are ambitious. One is trying to scan every piece of paper he owns and has put hours and hours toward that goal. Another has rooms full of boxes and wants to organize everything in them, possibly including digitization, and has figured that it would take the rest of her life. Indeed. I say, if that's the goal, do it.

As for me, organization is not the prize, it's a stepping stone towards what I want. I'm on a mission to find my Maness ancestor, the mystery we've been trying to figure out for four generations. That's my goal. And I really want to find him while my uncle is still around, because he got me started on this search. So I only need to get the Maness family information organized and entered into the computer. For now. If I looked at all my genealogy research for the past 20 years and tried to do something with it, that would distract me from my mission and take valuable time. My other current genealogical project is my book about the English family, and I switch back and forth between the two.

Instead of looking at that mountain of everything you can possibly do with your research and getting overwhelmed, let me suggest some ways to sharpen your focus.

1. Do something for somebody. Last year my goal was to scan large-format negatives of the Lassiter family and make a photo book for my uncle's 80th birthday. He loved it! And real deadlines, like milestone birthdays and family reunions, push me to get things accomplished.

2. Do something for yourself. If there's a pile of research on the floor by your desk and you're tired of tripping over it, just organize that pile. Set a timer and file (or scan, if you wish) papers until the timer goes off. The next day, repeat.

3. Do something for the future. Why are these people "organizing" everything? Is it so somebody won't throw it away when they're gone? Maybe it's for the fun of it, especially if those files were inherited (we genealogists love to play with new information), but these folks just don't sound like they're having fun. Perhaps a better goal would be to label all the boxes and write up instructions for when we're gone (Yes, I need to listen to my own preachin' here). I've been thinking about that lately, since I work in the Friends Historical Collection and we inherit other people's research. I have several family members that wouldn't mind having my research - they're mildly interested in it - but they would never do anything with it. Like spread it around or publish it. And then what would happen after they are gone?

My computer is a backup, a tool, but it's volatile. I don't expect any successor to come along and dig through old hard drives to pick out the information. Whether I give someone a photo book that makes him feel special, (finally) publish my genealogical novel that tells about the hopes and trials my ancestors went through, or leave published (or at least documented) family tree information for the next addict that comes along, I want to leave something tangible behind to make all this research worthwhile.

Why do we do genealogy? Yes, it's addictive, and fun! But my current reasons are that I want to tell the stories that need to be told and connect with family members who are still alive.

What's your raison d'être? Where are you going with this genealogy obsession?

Writers Read, Part 2 — The Preacher's Bride

2011-08-23T07:49:00.001-04:00

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd starting reading a historical novel that seemed very promising. Yes, The Preacher's Bride was just as enjoyable as those first few pages led me to believe. I stayed up late a few nights because I didn't want to put it down!

The setting is the closest to my work-in-progress that I've found so far — 1650s England (mine starts about 1660 in Ireland). TPB is also based on real people. So while I enjoyably immersed myself in the story, in the back of my mind I picked up writing tips.

For example, author Jody Hedlund mixes in historical details without slowing down the plot. She uses an old word for diaper and details the kind of plant used for firewood. Social structure becomes apparent in the first few pages — something we just don't think about in modern times.

I'm glad I read this book after my draft is already fleshed out, because I don't want to take too much from someone else's creativity. But I certainly have more research to do. I've already got an idea of what my characters wore and what they grew in their fields, but I need to find out the correct words for those articles of clothing and what ingredients were in their favorite stew. The research has been challenging — I've used books about England because the social histories about Ireland are 100 years too late.

Jody wrote dialogue in mostly modern language, but threw in "Twas" every now and then. I will have to use "Thou" and "thee" in my novel because it was so important to and distinguishing for Quakers, but I worry about bogging down the dialogue. So I notice how other historical writers deal with early modern English.

Jody's incorporation of a relationship with God was different from the Christian historical I had recently read. Her style was subtler and more believable, but the growth still progressed for characters who already had faith.

Another aspect I noticed was villain development. Jody has two main villains in her story, who appear several times and create worse and worse situations. However, my wip is a lengthy saga and the crises in the real John Clibborn's life involved multiple bad guys over decades of time: an army captain here, a priest's tithemonger there, and so forth. I'm thinking of making John offend the tithemonger when he was a just a boy, so his hatred of him 20 years later won't come out of the blue — but that adds more scenes to an already lengthy story. I could combine some of these villains into one or two characters, but I'd like to stay as factual as possible. What to do?

If you know any other good books set in the mid-17th century, I would love to hear about them. Meanwhile, whether you're a writer or not, I recommend The Preacher's Bride. Enjoy.

Abandoning Camp, But Not CampNaNo

2011-08-21T22:51:00.000-04:00

This time last year, my local NaNoWriMo friends and I were already psyched for November's annual National Novel Writing Month. This year, as we were getting nostalgic and missing each other, but not really thinking about whole new novels, the Office of Letters and Light launched Camp NaNoWriMo, which brings the same crazy writing challenge to any month of the year! As hectic as this summer has been, I had no intention of starting a novel in July. But as we tossed the idea around in our Facebook group, a few of us decided to dip our toes in for August. Including me.

No, I wasn't ready for a whole new novel - yet - but I needed a push to get back into my wip. The CampNano theme is really inspiring: "An idyllic writers retreat, smack-dab in the middle of your crazy life." I got into the camp spirit and dragged a mattress into my sun room where I could open up the windows and hear all the critters at night (and enjoy the cooler air during one of North Carolina's hottest summers), without having to battle real mosquitoes.

"Crazy Life" is right. Distractions, appointments, meetings, and family crises have abounded this month. Although I won't be anywhere near 50K words, ANY WHERE NEAR, I still wrote a little more than I might have otherwise. My virtual cabinmates are historical writers, which is fun, and something about posting my wordcount online just feels satisfying, even if those numbers are pathetically low (you can only count new words, and I'm revising).

While I enjoyed listening to tree frogs and crickets all night for a couple of weeks, I had some wicked strange dreams. Followed by ... a wicked backache. Last week I abandoned my makeshift campsite and moved back to my bed. Tomorrow I go see the doctor.

C'est la vie. I like changing things up a little every now and then for a creative boost. It's been a little like a real camp, where you come home sunburned and sleep-deprived and missing some socks, but your imagination has been recharged.

Here, have a marshmallow!

Writers Read. Period.

2011-08-08T07:43:00.029-04:00

Writing gurus tell us to read books in the genre that we want to write. Before I started my novel, I was reluctant to do that because I didn't want to copy anybody, even unintentionally. Now, I realize that not only is my story unique, but its specific genre has even changed since I started. Reading other books has not only taught me techniques, but has also helped me define what my future book is.

I thought it was going to be "historical" and I read Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower — all 480 pages of nonfiction. Hmm, maybe a little too historical. I've always aspired for my multigenerational story to be like Roots by Alex Haley. I read that and The Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog, and learned a lot from those two sagas. They seem to fall under historical fiction.

Today, as my manuscript has evolved and my reading list lengthened, I would call my work "Christian historical fiction" with elements of romance. So, the first half of this year, I've sought out a few Christian romance books to read — and been a bit disappointed. This seems to be a popular genre, but when I asked for recommendations, the bestsellers were set in modern cities. I needed historical. And the ones I picked off the shelves were...O.K.

One that I had owned for years and finally read was so disappointing I finished the first of the four stories in it and then gave it away. Yes, there was a bad guy, but most of the crises were caused by the MCs just acting stupid. Like falling in love with each other and then getting engaged to other people for no realistic reason. A more recent book that I got at the library was a little better, but terribly — or comfortably — predictable. And the denouement (the way they got out of a jam and into a happy ending) was too convenient and not very believable. However, I learned how Christian genre authors bring God into the plots and subplots, an aspect I had forgotten to include. I learned something from every book I read, even the bad ones.

I just picked up another Christian historical romance, set near the era I'm writing. I had seen the cover several times and a blurb on the author's blog (one of my Twitter and blog acquaintances — there's another lesson), but in light of the recent disappointments, I checked it out from the library instead of buying it. I didn't have time to read it right away since I'd committed to writing that afternoon, but I glanced at the beginning as I fixed lunch, to get a sense of the style.

I devoured four pages by the time the microwave rang off. The pace moves quickly but historical touches seep through. I have immediate concern for what's going to happen to that poor baby. I can identify with the frustration of people who are too proud to let you help. Yes, yes, this may be what I'm looking for! Something to learn from and enjoy! I'll let you know.

#amwriting Blog Party!

2011-08-03T00:01:00.004-04:00

Happy 2nd Birthday, #amwriting! #Amwriting is a hashtag — a code word writers use to connect with each other on Twitter. Another way to put it: #amwriting is a conversation, that anybody can pop in and join, and that conversation's been going on for two years! We're having a blog party to celebrate!

Around 2008, I said, "Twitter's too A.D.D. for me." I wasn't interested at all in short, seemingly random fragments about what strangers had to eat for dinner. By 2009-2010, I was checking Twitter before my e-mail. Now, I pretty much check Facebook and Twitter everyday and avoid my e-mail as long as possible. Here's why I became a tweetaholic:

1. Twitter is completely customizable. Through searching on certain words and hashtags, I've connected with genealogists and writers around the world. One of the first people that ever followed my blog was an American ex-pat writer in Turkey. Johanna Harness, creator of the #amwriting hashtag, is a shepherdess in the midwest. How else would I have ever found these interesting people?

2. It's community. After finding people that have something in common (like writing the great American novel), we cheer each other on. Yes, there are a few self-styled gurus and "coaches" that have found us and use the hashtag to plug their websites while ignoring the conversation that's going on (often the people with links in their posts), I just ignore them back. You can tell the people who are really there to write. They're saying that the kids are still in bed and they can steal a few pages. Or they suddenly want to kill off their main character. Or what's another word for chaos? We cheer each other on and sometimes answer. "You can do it!"..."I know the feelin'"..."Mayhem!"

3. No guilt. While my e-mail inbox gets so full it blinks red lights at me, — full of read me-reply to me-put this on your calendar-buy me — I can come back to Twitter (or Facebook) after several days of busyness and still have one page to read. Or more, but only if I want to. It's like running into your friends after not seeing them all week. You just catch up, and nobody feels bad that you've been apart for a few days because that's life.

Thanks, #amwriting tweeps, for the funnies, the tips, the kindred angst, and most of all the writing encouragement. Even when I've been gone for a while. (And happy #amwritingversary, Johanna!)

For those of you joining the party by blog tour, step on over to Robyn's TheOneAMPen. If there's no path to the next blog, knock on Nikki's door for the final blog party post.

A little bookstore laugh

2011-07-22T14:45:00.002-04:00

My days as a bookseller are often filled with pricing and listing books. As part of that task, I skim through each book to pick out the publication information and check the overall condition. One of these days I hope to pick up vintage children's books that haven't been colored on or in — I'm constantly finding illustrations that have been embellished with crayon. (Not that I ever did that. Oh, no! I think I used Daddy's ballpoint pen.) But this one made me laugh.

Maybe 50 years ago, some little girl not only read The Bobbsey Twins (1950 edition), but decided it needed editing. In both pink and regular pencil cursive, she crossed out chapter headings and wrote new ones, added a few derogatory comments about certain classmates, and added a few illustrations above chapter headings. Then she filled up the endpapers with a promo letter encouraging the reader to buy the next book...signed, "The Editors."

So, "Tando," did you grow up to be an editor or a writer?

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun — "Heritage Pie" Chart

2011-07-16T22:43:00.000-04:00

Tonight's challenge from Genea-Musings is to list your 16 great-great-grandparents, and where they came from, married, and died (I saw this meme on Tonia's Roots). Here are mine:

1. Ransom P. SAUNDERS b. ca 1818 in North Carolina, m. Delilah Beaver in March 1832, N.C., d. 1850 in N.C.

2. Delilah BEAVER b. ca 1810 in Caswell Co., North Carolina, d. before Dec. 1874, N.C.

3. John L. CARRELL b. 25 Oct. 1822, Rockingham Co., North Carolina, m. Julia Ann Young 22 Feb. 1845, Rockingham Co., N.C., d. 17 July 1895 (probably N.C.).

4. Julia Ann YOUNG b. 28 May 1817, North Carolina, d. 6 Jan. 1898.

5. Dempsey LASSITER b. ca 1823, Nansemond Co., Virginia, m. Elizabeth Jane --- before 1846, d. after 1910 (living in Nansemond Co., Virginia in 1910). Dempsey's son William Lassiter was one of my brick walls until a couple of years ago, when I finally found Dempsey and his family.

6. Elizabeth Jane --- b. ca 1825 in Nansemond Co., Virginia, d. before 1910.

7. Henry BAKER, m. Joan Weston before 1882

8. Joan WESTON, b. Nov. 1851

9. Thomas S. MANESS, b. ca 1849? (possibly Moore County, North Carolina), m. Sarah Pandora Wall 25 June 1874 in Guilford County, North Carolina, disappeared in 1875. Thomas is my current brick wall. He disappeared before my great-grandfather was born, and I am the fourth generation looking for him.

10. Sarah Pandora WALL, b. 29 Aug. 1859 in North Carolina, d. 30 July 1930, Randolph County, North Carolina.

11. Thomas Madison ENGLISH, b. 25 Aug. 1827, North Carolina, m. Armecia White after 1870, d. 3 June 1888, buried in Guilford County, North Carolina.

12. Cynthia Armecia WHITE, b. 9 Sept. 1849, North Carolina, d. 30 Dec. 1926 in Randolph County, North Carolina, buried in Guilford County.

13. William Gaston ROUTH, m. Roxie Bryant. Their children were born in Randolph County, North Carolina.

14. Roxie BRYANT.

15. Jacob Shadrach KINDLEY, b. 26 Oct. 1852, Davidson County, North Carolina, m. Mary Adaline Copple 14 Dec. 1871, Davidson County, North Carolina, d. 30 Aug. 1917.

16. Mary Adaline COPPLE, b. 16 May 1851, Davidson County, North Carolina, d. 18 Oct. 1911.

I've been obsessed with a few of my family branches (like the English family, a portion listed at the top of this blog) and this list shows how I've neglected others. While I hope to fill in the details someday, my near term goals are to finish my English family novel and to break through my Maness family brick wall.

If I drew a pie chart of locations, most of the circle would be filled with Carolina blue, with a little wedge for Virginia. The family seems to go back to colonial days before they start branching out to other countries.

Writing lessons from a guilty pleasure

2011-07-15T10:10:00.001-04:00

OK, confession time. During these very busy past few weeks, I haven't exactly been eating supper and dropping into bed. But I haven't had the mental energy late at night to do anything productive. So I've been watching Roswell. Since I don't have TV (cable or satellite), I watch series on Netflix. And last night for the first time in my life, a TV show kept me awake at night (possible exception is when the X-Files gave me nightmares, but it didn't wake me up in the middle of the night or early in the morning worrying about the characters).

(Warning: some spoilers here, but not as bad as running your cursor over the episodes in Netflix.)
Roswell was a TV show about 10 years ago, about teenaged aliens and humans. Last night (late in season 2), everything fell apart. A supporting character recently died, the female MC is losing friends over her obsession about his death, the male MC's sister is so angry she started using her powers in public and is about to tell their mom about them, and the mMC got together with - as in slept with - the wrong girl. Arrghh!!

I yell at the computer screen, "No. No. NO! Don't do that!" and I finally have to go to bed but my mind races and won't go to sleep. It's like these characters are real to me.

As a writer, I can learn from that.

As much as I hate what these characters are going through, they have me hooked. A decade ago, however, I got so disgusted with their pain and angst that I stopped watching. But I saw the series finale, so I know there's going to be a happy ending. Eventually. I decided to plow through all the episodes this time, but I'm probably going to have to endure a lot more bad before things get good. As a writer, I need to keep this in mind: "experts" say to throw lots of bad things at your characters to create conflict. But romantics like me will be turned off if there's not any hope.

You may wonder what an in-progress historical novel about my ancestors has to do with paranormal teen angst. I'm in this post-draft, fill-in-the-gaps, major revision phase where I need to turn conversations and facts into interesting action. I want Ann to be loyal and love only Benjamin and wait for a really long time for him to come to his senses. But I'm thinking I need to add a third character in there, a love-triangle, so Benjamin won't win Ann too easily when he finally gets his butt back home. Her pining away with no other conflict is probably too boring to keep my readers interested.

Every scene in Roswell builds tension. Even when it's not a life-or-death situation, there's romantic tension, worry about relationships (friends, siblings), mystery about where the aliens came from or who are their enemies, and mostly a constant "What's going to happen next?" With the supporting character's death, the writers turned that around into "What happened?" - still building curiosity.

Last night's episode (II-18) had:
- lots of conflicts (all of the characters) about "was it suicide or murder or neither?"
- romantic tension as the fMC turned to the mMC for friendship.
- romantic conflict with two other characters, resolved before the end of the show.
- attempted romantic tension between fMC and a new supp. character (not really believable, but I still yell No! at the screen).
- rising conflict over the sister moving away and mMC's attempts to boss her. "What next?" tension at the resultant use of her powers in front of a crowd, powers that have been kept secret throughout the series.
- romantic tension with the constant arrival of the female competitor, finalized by a (No!!) bedroom scene at the end.
- building curiosity with clues about supp. character's final months, with a major twist at the end (visually interspersed with the romantic scene above).

That's a lot to pack into one 45-minute show!

Checking in

2011-07-13T22:13:00.000-04:00

I never wanted to be one of those bloggers whose posts consist of apologies for not posting. However, it's been a month since my last tidbit here and I thought readers might want to know that I'm still breathing.

I had these interesting vignettes running around my mind last month, mostly about working in the Quaker archives, but now those synapses are faded and dated and I think I need to start with the present (although I may write later about the book pirate. We'll see). I've been in survival mode — and that's better than it sounds. For example, I'm working three jobs this week.

In January an advertising firm hired me as a freelance copyeditor /proofreader. When I learned from a colleague that they only called her twice during her first year with them, I decided I'd better find another job (and a book store was born!). Well, they called me in this week. Fortunately, a relative of mine was available to watch the bookshop during the day. So everything has been going well, but topsy turvey eat-dinner-at-8:30pm-and-crash.

And the weekend before last, I went to the beach. Sans computer. Yep, no internet at all for three days. Just quality pajama and bathing suit time with my extended family, getting soaked in a boat and rosy-pink on a beach and being forced to eat ice cream at bedtime every night.

It was lovely.

Monday — What a good day!

2011-06-13T21:57:00.002-04:00

This has been a nice day. In the morning, I went for a walk with loved ones. I had good sales at the book shop (the best so far). Then I came home to a package full of writing books!

(This many books is a splurge, but I had a discount coupon)

Genealogy fun with South Carolina Quakers

2011-05-30T22:45:00.001-04:00

Last week I talked to a couple of people about Quakers in South Carolina. Since I started working at the Friends Historical Collection in January, we've had a few people from out of town come in to research their family history (I'm not the only one who takes genealogy vacations!). This time, a lady had found references to her ancestors in Hinshaw (the popular and handy Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy) and other books and wanted to find primary records from Bush River Meeting.

I've always been fascinated by the Bush River records, and I got the chance to learn more about them. The originals are in our collection, but they were in a fire many years ago, so they're brown and brittle and look like the Dead Sea Scrolls. We have many records from the 1700s that have been preserved and are in decent shape, but the Bush River records haven't been restored, yet, and they're so fragile we don't even touch them. Somehow, at some time past, somebody made a photocopy of them. I pulled those for our visitor, but the years she was looking for were missing.

I racked my brain, trying to remember something from the inventory I've been working on. Finally, on the second day, I found transcripts of the records — and they included all of the years.

I don't know much about Laura Worth, but she is my hero. She helped William Hinshaw write the first volume of the Encyclopedia, the one that included North and South Carolina. As part of that work in the 1930s, she transcribed — by hand — many old Quaker records.

On Friday, I talked to Bill Medlin, author of Quaker Families of South Carolina and Georgia (1982), who now lives in Indiana. His book, out of print for many years, lists many members of Wateree meeting and I wanted to know how he found their names. (My previous posts about the lost Fredericksburgh/Wateree meeting minutes are here and here.) For the book, which he hopes to reprint sometime in the future, Bill used the same techniques I was planning to use: look through the records of other meetings for mentions of Wateree and its members. He encouraged me, but cautioned that not all of his information came from Hinshaw, who only gleaned genealogical extracts. Reading through other meetings' minutes sounds pretty overwhelming, I thought.

Bill confirmed that the Fredericksburgh minutes were received at Bush River in the early 1780s, so they disappeared after that date. He and another genealogist had advertised a reward for those records, with no results, and the other man had searched for them for about 40 years.

The good news is, Bill is currently working on a book about Bush River.

Bookhunting in London — Part 3, Charing Cross and Cecil Court (Updated)

2011-05-18T22:12:00.007-04:00

With no other plans for the afternoon, I decided to look for Cecil Court and its many bookshops. My map took me down Charing Cross Road. Having just read 84, Charing Cross Road, I had to look for the address. Not all of the businesses were numbered, but as best I could figure out, the famous address now belongs to a Pizza Hut.

I took a picture of this interesting clock in case I get the chance to compare it with any images of the legendary bookshop.

UPDATE: I wish I'd known the name of the restaurant to look for, and that there's a brass plaque commemorating the bookstore site. It was apparently on another corner of this large Cambridge Circus intersection. Both Pizza Hut and "Med Kitchen" (the restaurant on the former site) use intersecting streets, not Charing Cross Road, in their addresses. I'm still a little confused, because the business next to Pizza Hut was 82 or 80 with numbers going down (and in the 90s across the street), and Google maps says the address 84 is in the middle of the intersection. Anyway, here's a great site with photos of Marks & Co.

What I didn't realize was there were many other bookshops along Charing Cross Road, before I even got to Cecil Court. I went into the first one. The young man behind the counter never greeted me.

I found a couple of books full of photos from movies (1946 and 1953), with lots of famous stars when they were young. I bought them after touring the downstairs. I didn't bother to ask for a discount, because the man seemed so unfriendly and the prices were already very reasonable.

There was another bookstore right next door! We don't have any used bookstores in our town, much less antiquaria or even vintage (that is, before I opened my own shop in March). And here I seemed to be surrounded. I made myself just window shop, keeping in mind my already-full luggage and tight budget (see previous posts, part 1 and part 2). But at the next one, I just had to go in.

Henry Pordes Books had shelves filled with books up to the ceiling, and old and new books mixed together by subject. When I found a side room with a great selection of British and Irish history, I sat down on the floor for some serious searching. I ended up with a lovely illustrated history of old Edinburgh (research for my future novels).

So far, I'd entered three shops today, bought books at all three, and I hadn't even reached Cecil Court! When I did, I was stunned to find an entire street of bookshops.

Cecil Court

Unsworth's had been on my list before I set out, since they specialize in history. I was very tempted by one book — I've been looking for social history on 17th-century Ireland for two years — but I realized that it was only about the nobility, and tore myself away. It's not the bookseller's fault that his shop was farther down my street of temptation.

Oh, and guess what surprise awaited me at the other end of Cecil Court?

A Quaker meetinghouse.

Bookhunting in London - Part 2, Persephone Books

2011-05-13T17:53:00.002-04:00

As I debated whether or not to spend one of my days in London shopping, I remembered that Chris at Book Hunter's Holiday had highly recommended Persephone Books. I decided that if it were close, I would stop in, and if it weren't, I wouldn't. Come to find out (as we say in the South), it was only a few blocks from my hotel.

I found the shop on a pedestrian-friendly street with several cafés right next to each other.

Persephone Books is not only an independent bookshop, but also a small press. They reprint "neglected classics" by women writers, some as paperbacks, and some in their unique format — sturdy, smooth gray paper with a matching dustjacket and cloth-design endpapers. For each book, they use the cloth design on a matching bookmark, with a description of the story.

I bought Midsummer Night in the Workhouse, a collection of short stories that looked just right for the flight home. The endpapers are based on a sofa the author used to own.

So far my favorite is the title story, about a group of writers staying in a mansion on a sponsored writing retreat.

Bookhunting in London - Part 1, Jarndyce

2011-05-10T21:50:00.000-04:00

As a shiny new bookseller, I imagined myself finding wonderful books in old, musty bookshops whilst in London. Why not, since I've been bookhunting all my life? The reality, though, was that I had limited funds, had heard that shipping a box home could be enormous, and my bags were already stuffed, with the airlines huffing about strict luggage rules. I had the addresses of several shops near Charing Cross Road, but couldn't decide whether or not I would spend one of my precious days shopping, considering the aforementioned limitations.

I happened to see a bookshop across from the British Museum, near my hotel. Since it was so close, I decided to stop in on my way back to the room. Jarndyce Booksellers specializes in 19th-century literature. I quickly decided the books were out of my price range, but it's a lovely shop. I could tell they've been in business a long time because of the condition of the books — no missing spines, no worn bindings here. Imagine how long it took to find and acquire them all!

I introduced myself, and the proprietress kindly loaded me up with catalogs. Their catalogs look like books themselves, and they print 5 or 6 a year! An interesting side note: Jarndyce gets most of their business through their catalogs and mailing list. Then they list books on the internet.

As much as I love books and being around them, especially old books, I felt a bit discouraged because such a great collection of antiques seems so far out of my league. My shop, Tannery Books, is a general used book shop with just a few antiques. Although I want to learn about antiquaria and grow that part of my business, I'm consoled by the fact that anybody can walk in my shop and find something affordable. And I decided to keep it that way.

Home!!

2011-05-07T19:05:00.000-04:00

I'm finally home, after what feels like days of traveling — 3:30 am London time/10:30 pm U.S. time until 5:30 pm U.S. I'll write about bookhunting in London after a rest and after downloading pictures from the camera.

Lonely epistles from South Carolina

2011-05-03T17:31:00.002-04:00

I went to Friends House in London today. It's a huge building across from Euston train station, with two Meeting houses, cafe, restaurant, library — and that's just the main floor. Signs indicated that offices, publications, etc. were upstairs. I peeked into the large meeting room and it looked like Parliament in the historical movies, with seats down either side and straight-backed wooden seating high on a second level.

Copying 18th-century letters

I went to the library and asked for the 1700s correspondence between colonial South Carolina and London Yearly Meeting. I'm looking for any mentions of Fredericksburgh Monthly Meeting to try to re-create their lost records. Today I found their epistles, mostly annual reports, to London.

Fredericksburgh Meeting members considered themselves remote and independent, so they reported directly to London. I never thought that was strange until I happened to mention to the librarian that most of these pioneers were Irish. His implied question was immediate: wouldn't they report to Ireland? But no, the letters are there. Maybe it was because the Religious Society of Friends started in England; London was considered the mother ship. The letters show great loyalty and attachment, even though the people writing and reading them probably never met.

With London's insistence, Fredericksburgh eventually joined New Garden Quarter, based in North Carolina. They really didn't want to. They wrote that they were "isolate" and "remote." The nearest monthly meeting, Bush River, was about 75 miles away, and New Garden a couple hundred miles. The funny thing is that during those days of walking or traveling by horse, Friends "in this wilderness" felt like New Garden was as out of reach as Mars; they preferred to answer to people on the other side of the ocean.

I found a clue. The helpful librarian brought me an article about Fredericksburgh. They turned over their minutes to Bush River Meeting about 1783. So, at some point, over 200 years ago, the minutes existed. Somebody did write things down.


The library at Quaker House. Old prohibition posters adorn the balcony.

Sunday snippets

2011-05-01T17:51:00.001-04:00

A "dry" egg. Marmite. Workshop: spiritual autobiography. Turkey slices with crunchy yummy part. Walking through gardens and wooded paths, wearing a flowing skirt and soft shoes. Peaceful worship, irritation, peace again. Group photo on the veranda. Business, budgets and brainstorming. Partners. A "slide slow" in pantomime. Spirit Rising, spirit writing, listening, obeying, faith. More tea and biscuits. Morris dancing. Gathering around small screens. Laughing.

Inspiration

2011-04-30T18:37:00.001-04:00

It's 11:20 pm here, and the first time I've been to my room since before lunch. But that's how conferences are: days full of workshops, socializing over meals, and meetings. I don't want to miss anything. But I did squeeze in a couple of 20 or 30 minute sessions in Woodbrooke's Quaker Library. I mostly scanned through the Irish and Carolina histories (unless I recognized something we have at Guilford), looking for tidbits to use in my novels.

It was beautiful outside today. But this is my kind of inspiration...

Reboot, Retry, Retreat ... Repeat

2011-04-28T12:14:00.001-04:00

I just arrived in Birmingham, England, after an overnight flight with the usual free time. Now I'm at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, with the day off, surrounded by quiet places, all kinds of encouragement for writers — and I didn't bring my book to work on.

You may be thinking: *face-palm* Beth! Why didn't you bring your novel? Well, for starters, it's in the second draft stage, printed out, and weighs about 10 pounds. I simply could not see lugging that giant binder around with me when I'm traveling light. If I had been working on it consistently, I would have brought the latest chapters to work on, but I'm just not there.

After months of hiatus, I restarted writing several weeks ago. I started with Debbie Ohi's 500 Words A Day challenge. Although I didn't write as many days per week as I wanted — what with two jobs and irregular work schedules — it really did help get my mind back into writing mode. I wrote at least 500 words at each sitting, about anything.

After a couple of weeks of journaling and writing exercises, I felt ready to reboot the novel. I turned to the Writer's Toolbox (a Christmas gift :-) which had some helpful ideas. One of them was to start at the beginning and retype the book. Since my revisions have been mostly handwritten, I thought typing it in would be a good place to start. I went to a cafe on a Monday and worked away! Chapter 1, editing as I go, yay! I felt ready to keep going in the days ahead.

On Tuesday, a dear friend died. Frankly, there are some days when you just don't feel like writing. I don't mean the procrastination kind of feelings, I mean the world-turned-upside-down kind.

A week later, on Monday, I headed out to the cafe and started again. Then I started working extra days, getting ready for this vacation. Am I the only one who glances at these writer blogs where they all say "Just do it!", sighs and says: someday...? They make it sound so easy. But, even if I have to start over every week, or even every month, I'm going to write this book!

I plan to do research for the second book when I go to London next week. I did bring my laptop and a notebook, and pieces of the first novel are probably somewhere in my head. Maybe I will find the inspiration here to start pouring good bits and pieces onto the page or screen.

But for right now, I'm at this beautiful retreat centre, surrounded by nature, wildlife, and Earl Grey tea. And I'm going to retreat.

Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre

Japanese Garden at Woodbrooke

Back on the trail of my ancestors

2011-04-13T08:59:00.016-04:00

I can't believe I'm going back to England in just two weeks! All my attention has been on the new bookshop, but I need to get back into the genealogy mindset. I'm going to a Quakers Uniting in Publications conference in Birmingham, but I added a precious few days in London at the end of the trip for genealogy research. My primary goal this time is to find out all I can about the Fredericksburgh Monthly Meeting.

Fredericksburgh, now known as Camden, South Carolina, was also known as the Wateree meeting (on the Wateree River) and even Pine Tree Hill. When my ancestor Joshua English moved there from Ireland in 1753, he brought his wife, Mary, and six children: Thomas (22), Elizabeth (18), Robert (16), John (~13), Mary (~11) and Joshua (~8). (Fellow historians think the younger four children came on a separate voyage because they weren't present at court for the land request. My research shows that no other Quaker families arrived in the four months before they did show up in the records, so I believe they traveled with their parents.)

Genealogists with Quaker lines are usually fortunate, because they kept meticulous vital records. However, living archivists and deceased authors alike assure me that no records exist for Fredericksburgh Meeting. Whether they didn't keep records, or the records were destroyed, or they sit lost in someone's attic, nobody seems to know. The meeting fell apart after only a couple of decades and was formally laid down in 1784. Apparently, wealth and slaves and plantation life drew several members away from their faith. Those who stayed true to Quaker ideals moved to Bush River Meeting, which was farther into the South Carolina backcountry, or to other states. Joshua's son Thomas, my ancestor, remained a Quaker and his son John moved to Bush River and then to North Carolina.

Two things inspired me to hunt for these records. 1 - I read in a book that Fredericksburgh reported directly to the London Yearly Meeting. Later on, they were under North Carolina Yearly Meeting, but seemed to have little interaction with other American meetings. 2 - Skimming through a Virginia heritage book, I ran across a letter from Fredericksburgh Meeting, signed by its members. I thought, if a Virginia meeting has a record - a snapshop in time - of this little group of Quakers, more records must exist.

The letter attests to the character of William Terrell and his wife Martha, who apparently moved from Fredericksburgh to Southriver Meeting in Virginia with their children in 1762. It was signed by Samuel Wiley; John, Henry, Robert, James and Rebecca Millhouse; John, Joshua, Robert, Joseph, and Mary English and Mary English Jr.; William Elmore; William Smith; Zeb. Gauntt; Timothy, Samuel, John and Mary Kelly; Mary Tomlinson; Sarah Russell; and Mary Cook.

Those names give me enough clues to hunt for more.

Photographers' Marks (Photographic Puzzles, part 2)

2011-03-27T22:37:00.001-04:00

Last week I offered some tips that have helped me identify old photos. As promised, I want to share a success story.

Mr. Y e-mailed me several photos from his family collection that had no identification, including this family group. He knew which branch of the family they came from, and that they had lived in Wilson, N.C. He suspected this was a picture of his great-grandparents. Mr. Y had started with genealogical research, including census records, to get the names and ages of children in the family. He asked if I could come up with any more clues.

Photos courtesy of the Yarborough family

I wasn't sure if I could help, at first. I thought the boy in the back looked like he was wearing a military cape, but I'm not an expert at clothing clues and I didn't want to steer anybody wrong. I finally decided I would just look up the photographers' marks and not spend too much time on this lovely puzzle.

The names on the left were a little hard to read from the scan, but I picked out "Engle." I didn't expect to find him in my Photographers in North Carolina book because of the Philadelphia mark, but I looked for him anyway — and got lucky.

Apparently John F. Engle had a long, illustrious career, making photographs all around the country, including Philadelphia. He did spend some time in North Carolina, and worked with a man named Lund. Look closely: Lund is the name beneath Engle on the mark. And in the center is an elaborate E and L.

I looked up the other name. Viggo Lund worked with Engle in 1897 on Nash Street in Wilson. They worked together other years in Elizabeth City, but since this family branch lived in Wilson, the time they had a studio there would be a good assumption.

Most of the photographers in the book worked in certain areas for several years or even decades. But these two men worked together in that town just one year. Amazingly, that narrowed down the photograph to 1897.

According to Mr. Y's research and more recent photos, the young man with the mustache is probably his great-grandfather, Bud Perry. The older couple are his step-father and mother, Claiborn Perry and Zilphia Smith, who had five children at home in 1900. In 1897, the two boys would have been about 12 and 15, and the three girls age 9, 7 and 3. Bud, 20, got married in December of that year.

This cabinet card appears to be the boy on the right in the family photo, Weston Perry. The couple's youth and prominent display of rings suggest a wedding photo. Francis Marion Winstead was a photographer from 1880 to ca. 1908. This picture was probably taken between 1898 and 1908, when Winstead returned to Wilson and worked without a partner, because only his name appears on the frame. Those dates also fit the likelihood that Weston would not have been married yet in the 1897 picture (at age 15).

This lovely young lady also posed for Francis Marion Winstead. Upon closeup comparison of her face with the two dark-headed girls in the family portrait, I think she is the little girl on the right. That puts this photo toward the latter part of the 1898-1908 window.

Mr. Y is hot on the trail of his ancestors, armed with a few more clues. And once again I'm glad I invested in a good reference book that provides such useful information.

Solving photographic puzzles

2011-03-20T21:37:00.002-04:00

Last year when I spoke at the High Point Library about preserving old photographs, I mentioned how I had identified some 19th and early 20th-century family photos that weren't labeled.

1. Learn to recognize faces. After looking at many different pictures, I learned to recognize my great-grandfather, his mother, and his uncle, even when they were very young or very old.

2. Compare frames. As I recognized my g-g-g-uncle in one photograph with a white, textured paper frame, I remembered that one of my unidentified pictures had that same kind of textured frame. That connected the person to my uncle, probably from the same sitting for a photographer. After comparing the faces with other pictures, I realized this was his youngest son, but much older than in any of his other pictures.

3. Use genealogical research to fill in other people. In a five-generation photo, I knew everybody except the little boy. I found out that the young lady in the photo only had one son and he was her first child (which would make a family want to pose for a 5-gen photo). A more mysterious photo had my young g-grandfather with a young woman, who looked nothing like my g-grandmother. Paw was an only child, so who could she be? After extensive research, I realized that he grew up in the same household with his aunt - they were one year apart. I concluded that they must have been like brother and sister, and therefore posed for a portrait together.

4. Look for clothing clues. I'm very much an amateur in this area, but Maureen Taylor is an expert. I enjoy reading her blog about how she solves photo mysteries.

5. Use the type of photograph (daguerreotype, tintype, paper, etc.) to narrow down the timeframe when it was taken.

6. Use photographers' marks to further narrow in on the year and possibly the location of the photo.

One of the people who came to my class at the library recently sent me a photographic puzzle, and step no. 6 turned out to be a huge clue. I'll tell you more about it in the coming week.

Book finds in Maryland

2011-03-14T23:46:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago I drove up to Maryland for the weekend to see friends, and this time, to do a little bookhunting.

Friday night, I went with my friend Suzy to listen to live music and indulge in tasty Southern Maryland crab balls.

Saturday morning, I drove down 235 to an antique store in Lexington Park, The Grapevine. I fell in love with this little antique corner chair and bought it for the bookshop. I picked up a few books, too.

After lunch with another friend, I went a used book store in the old part of Leonardtown. As I wandered through aisles and around corners in Fenwick's, I kept thinking there was only one more room, but then there would be a doorway and another room. I like bookstores like that.

Fenwick St. Used Books

They have a whole bookshelf of Star Trek. :-)

I introduced myself to the owner, Joe, as a new bookseller and he was very kind. He runs the "Old book store" e-mail list for brick-and-mortar booksellers. He answered my questions and mentioned websites and names that have recently become familiar, from the bibliophile list or in my bookselling research.

As we were talking, I noticed the high, ebony, mirrored bar behind the counter. Joe told me that his place had been a bar for many years! He had covered the tile floor with carpet and had shelves built. The small room in the back, the fantasy and sci-fi room, had once been the ladies' room.

After that pleasant visit, I stopped by Staples and picked up a shelf that had been out of stock back home. Then I went to a "new books" store in California, Md. that's going out of business. Bay Books has been an independent shop here for 23 years. 'Hard to believe, since I remember when they first opened!

I wasn't sure I wanted to buy new books, because now I can get a discount from distributors and also because I'm not sure if they're still new books after you buy them from a store. But when I saw that Bay Books was already offering 50% off, I decided to risk buying some.

I had just about decided that I wasn't going to introduce myself, when I saw a sign indicating that the shelves were for sale. I just had to ask about them, and the clerk quickly introduced me to the owner. The shelves were reasonable — not super cheap, but a good value — but I told the owner I just didn't have a way to transport them to N.C. He took my name and number and wished me luck.

The owner of Bay Books had previously offered the store — shelves, inventory, everything — for sale at a very reasonable price, but with no takers they proceeded to liquidation, just like the Borders back home.

I spent the rest of the weekend with friends, food, my former church, more friends and more food. By Monday's departure, the car was filled with books and furniture for the new bookshop.

A Wee Opening at Tannery Books

2011-03-11T22:43:00.001-05:00

The past two weeks have been absolutely crazy as I prepared to open my new bookstore, Tannery Books, and volunteered with church events that included missionaries visiting from far away. Of course, I didn't plan all that to happen at the same time! Very little went according to my ideal schedule — my counter didn't arrive until two nights ago, the floor wasn't finished until about two weeks ago, the sign had some delays and didn't go up until yesterday... I still don't have a digital version of my logo. On the positive side, I've been blessed over and over. Family members did the professional work (at a good rate for me and some business for them), and people gave me some books and furniture.

A week and a half ago: I can put the shelves in!

This past week: Sorting and pricing books

Irish tea and "biscuits"

People kept asking me, when is the grand opening? With all the doubt and waiting for the basics before I could bring in the books, I couldn't guarantee anything grand. So I told them it would be a "Wee Opening," in keeping with March's Irish theme.

With all the chaos, I was up until 4:30am this morning pricing books and cleaning up. I still hadn't cleaned the new counter (a large glass display case that has been stored in a garage for some time) and I hadn't even started pricing the antique books. One goal I really wanted to meet, but didn't, was to have some flyers to hand out with basic information like store hours and trade-in policies. But people didn't seem to mind. I started an e-mail list and said I would send them information later.

My counter/display case — future home for antique books

People stopped by all day to browse, chat and wish me well. A few bought books, and one friend brought me a trunkload of books as a donation. It was a great opening day!

Tannery Books — Opening day!

A Bookstore Blessing

2011-03-07T22:55:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning all week to share some bookish news about my trip to Maryland, but not only was I trying to get the shop ready, I was also helping to prepare for Mid-Year Gathering for North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Quakers), held this past weekend. As part of that gathering, we had missionaries in town from Kenya, Mexico, Alabama and Jamaica. It was invigorating.

Today I planned to take our pastor from Mexico out to lunch. I've been to the meeting in Matamoros a couple of times and wanted to share just a little of the hospitality that he and his family always offer us. I asked him and another friend to meet me at the bookshop, where I figured I would be working. They arrived before me, though, and I unlocked the door to show them my new business. There were books stacked on the floor, boxes strewn about, empty shelves, and the strong smell of new carpet (have I mentioned that we're opening in four days?).

Pastor Jorge stopped just inside the door. He told me and the other friend that he wanted to pray for me and my business. We held hands and he prayed, in Spanish, asking the Lord to bring people and business and to bless the place. I was deeply moved.

Just wanted to share that.

Genealogy check-in — Dinah English

2011-02-20T22:01:00.002-05:00

I've been so busy with the book store (opening in a few weeks!) that I haven't spent much time with genealogy or writing. A few weeks ago I wrote two good pages of Joshua's story. (If you're new to this blog, I'm writing a historical novel about my Quaker ancestors in Ireland, to be as factual as possible, like Roots. Joshua is the final generation, the one who emigrates to America, and I've had a hard time imagining his story, which has a lot of genealogical holes in it.)

I tried two other mornings to write, and didn't get down a word. Maybe I need to get back in the habit of writing more often, but that's hard to do when juggling several part-time jobs, physical therapy and church events.

I did have one break-through, not through my own efforts, but from a fellow genealogist. He got my e-mail from a bulletin board (yes, genealogists still use online bulletin boards to find each other) and asked for some information about the English family. He gave me Dinah English's birth year, another piece of the English family puzzle.

Dinah's birth date was strangely missing from all of the Quaker records of Moate, County Westmeath, Ireland. For fictional purposes I had made her the oldest child of Thomas English. I use a lot of educated guesses in my novel; I figured, why would a younger child hide her age? My new informant confirms that she was indeed the oldest child.

I also had a theory in my head that she wouldn't admit to her age not because she was vain, but because she was born "too early"; her parents were only 18 when they got married in England (young by later Quaker standards), and I think it was common among 17th century people to have to get married, if you know what I mean. I didn't include that in the book (yet) because it might not be the case, and I'm not out to dishonor my ancestors, just tell their story. But the theory is possible. Thomas and Ann were married in 1630, and now I know that Dinah was born in 1630.

As a first-generation Quaker and the wife of the village landlord, I think Dinah was embarrassed and hid her birth date to protect her parents' reputation.

A Bookish Weekend

2011-02-14T08:08:00.004-05:00

I've really been blessed with friends offering to give me books for my bookshop, especially a few who decided it was time to clean out.

I drove out into the countryside Friday to one friend's house and she gave me stacks of books, old and new. When I saw this one, I told her it wasn't going to be for sale:

Back to Basics has instructions for everything from building an adobe house to tanning hides.

Of course, I like the section on spinning. I don't know if I'll ever have time to learn to spin, but I like the idea of it and I have to stop and watch every spinner I see.

We had a nice visit and she also showed me some of her books that she's keeping — some with family signatures in them, genealogy books and an old family Bible.

Saturday, I went to the High Point Library book sale. Actually, I went twice — in the morning to buy old books and anything that looked special, and again in the afternoon for the bag sale. I was the first in line for the bag sale and I got to chat with an acquaintance as we waited for the happy chaos. The two trips sent me home to the bookshop with nearly a hundred books, total.

I know, collectors would turn up their noses at these ex-library editions, but I'm building a bookstore from scratch and trying to get a good variety. And the prices were good, with large art books priced the same as any other hardback. I recently bought Joyce Godsey's Book Repair for Booksellers. Before the shop opens, I'm going to have to study it and learn how to take off all the extra library stickers to make the books look a little nicer.

I chose mostly nonfiction, because I knew another friend was planning to bring me a lot of fiction Saturday afternoon. But as I was about to check out at the library sale, I quickly scanned the fiction shelves and saw The Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog. I never expected to see that on the discount shelves! While I'm working on the variety books first, I eventually want to specialize in Quaker books, genealogy and local history. I already have a fine copy of The Peaceable Kingdom in my personal collection, and now I have one to offer at the bookstore, too.

My friend BookishMiss and her mom brought boxes and boxes of books and got a peek at the shop's progress, including the new floor.

Through a weekend of generosity and good deals, I probably added about 300 books to my inventory. Now I just need shelves to put them on...

Building a Bookshop — From the floor up

2011-02-12T21:46:00.000-05:00

I spent every week night this past week painting the bookstore. I tried to pick out colors and painted sample splotches on the walls, but I didn't like any of them. I found more paint in the closet and decided to go with the original colors. I had liked the paint scheme that was already there, but there were so many holes in the wall and some bare spots of wallboard that I had to paint the whole thing. I had enough of every color except the brown. I went to Lowe's and had them match the paint — well, it didn't match, exactly, but that'll be my storage area in the back of the building. ;-)

Friday, the carpet went in. I was glad I didn't have to wait 'til next week (and that's why I worked so hard to get the painting done), because nothing else can go in until there's a floor to put it on. Check it out!

The carpet's not as gray as this picture makes it look. It's actually a Berber with brown and a lot of other colors in it.

Earlier in the week I got phone and internet hooked up. As soon as I take my laptop over and set things up, we'll have wi-fi.

I stand in the store and look around and think, this is getting real. I'm actually going to have a book store!

The Annual Beth-David Book Sale

2011-02-08T20:41:00.003-05:00

I've been so busy getting my bookshop ready, plus family and church events, that I haven't written yet about the Beth-David Annual Book Sale. This was the second year I went to the Saturday night event, which includes wine and cheese, as well as a gym full of books! But this year didn't include a snowstorm, so the gym was packed with a lot of other people besides us.

The Beth-David sale has a great variety, but there were only a few items on the "old and rare" table. I came home with just one box and put several things back, thinking I might come back Monday (discount day), but that didn't work out.

I was still excited to be there surrounded by so many books, but I felt different this year, looking at everything through the eyes of a real bookseller. I have to think about resale value, now. But I still have so much to learn.

I don't know if they're worth much, but I picked up these old paperbacks, several with original prices in "cents."

My box included some first editions of popular 1980s fiction and this Book of Trades (I wrote a previous post about another book of trades). I'm not familiar with reprints; this brand new, unread book with bright white pages is a reprint of an old book with lots of illustrations and historical information.

The book on the right, Liberty and the News, is admittedly not in great condition, but as a sometime journalist, I couldn't resist. And the way a quote is pasted onto the cover is intriguing.

I also couldn't resist a couple of books about books, including this one on Yiddish literature...

... and one about a famous library cat.

I've been wanting to read Dewey — this book is for me!

A temporary breakout...

2011-01-28T15:39:00.002-05:00

My future bookshop has the measles!

Don't worry, it's only a temporary case. I asked the landlord to fill in the holes in the wall. When I walked in and saw this, I had to laugh. He did a great job!

Now it's my turn. I'm not the best at picking out coordinating paint colors, but I have to try this weekend so I can paint the walls before the carpet arrives.

Building a Bookshop — driving all over town

2011-01-25T21:13:00.001-05:00

Today seemed like a more productive day for this future bookseller.

I went to a store supply place to look for bookshelves. They didn't carry that kind of furniture, just items like manikins and clothes racks. But I did pick up a baker's rack (a folding shelf) on clearance and some pretty, recycled bags to give to customers.

After lunch, the realtor and I went over the lease, then I stopped by the insurance company to purchase liability insurance. Next on the list was City Hall, to apply for a license. After dropping off my baker's rack and bags at the shop, I went to look at carpet and picked out a style and color.

I feel tired tonight, like I've put in a good day's work. Hopefully, someday, I'll get paid for it!

Building a Bookshop — waiting by the phone

2011-01-24T18:41:00.001-05:00

I recently bought Patience and Fortitude, Nicholas Basbanes' book about bookselling, although I haven't read it yet. It looks like I'm going to need both virtues to open my book store.

I've spent all of my non-library days for the past couple of weeks taking steps to start a bricks-and-mortar business. I got a tax ID number and opened a bank account, paid the first month's rent and started turning on utilities. I admit I was in a bit of a hurry once I made the decision to open a store, because I wanted to accept some inventory (with more possibly coming this weekend) and buy furnishings, and because I needed the address to write on all my official paperwork. You see, you need a physical address to open accounts. And you need those accounts to rent the place... well, it all worked out.

My friends have been very supportive and people are starting to ask me when the store will open. I told them mid-February, but that was optimistic. I need to get shelving, which is the biggest intimidation for me because I have no idea how much it will cost. I'm still shopping, but I can't set up shelves until the carpet is down. I can't install carpet until the walls are painted. And I can't paint until the owner makes some repairs. I'm also still working out details with the lease; yes, I'm already in the place, but I'm dealing with multiple levels of people, not just the owner. Since I'm one of those people who actually reads every word, I tend to find problems and negotiation has been a challenge.

So, I tried to run errands today as I waited for phone calls. I need patience, because I have to depend on other people who aren't constrained to my schedule. And I need fortitude, because this kind of investment is scary, but it's an investment in the future. Let me add wisdom, and prayers, to that list.

Genealogical Epiphany: A Blessed Injury

2011-01-21T07:27:00.003-05:00

I recently made a Storybook (photo book) for my uncle, which required scanning my dad's negatives from the 1950s. The fun part was getting together with my maternal aunt so she could tell me who the people in the pictures were. But she mentioned something that really surprised me. She said, matter-of-factly, that my uncle's brothers were given a vaccine in the military that made them sterile. What?!

Yes, she nodded. Something that was supposed to protect them from biological warfare. Hallie never had any children. Neither did Husie. Clark had a child before going off to war (I'm not sure if this was World War II or the Korean War), but never had any more after he came home. My uncle, who never went into the military, had children, and so did his sister.

I filed that tidbit away in the back of my mind and a couple of busy weeks passed. Then one morning in the shower (a popular place for brainstorms), I started thinking about my dad's side of the family. Daddy's brothers served in World War II. It suddenly occurred to me that Jack never had any children (he had a stepson). Gene couldn't have children, so he and his wife adopted. Wayne never had children, either. All three were overseas in combat. Their younger brother Randall had children (16 years apart!), but he stayed in the U.S., stationed in Texas near the end of the War. Most of our cousins came from the girls in the family.

I think Daddy was drafted. He packed his things, gave his class ring to his sweetheart (Momma) and reported in. But Daddy had a bad ear from a childhood injury, and they sent him home. That ear bothered him all his life.

I'm not one of those anti-government people at all; I've always relegated clandestine experiments and government cover-ups to the X-Files and other fiction. And this is all conjecture; I don't have any proof.

But here's the epiphany (as the water in the shower grows colder) — if it weren't for Daddy's injured ear, my sister and I might not be here.

Book nook

2011-01-19T10:04:00.000-05:00

I found a large ottoman at the Bouldin House auction a couple of weekends ago. It was just what I needed to finally turn one of my dormer windows into a cozy corner for reading or working on my novel. I even moved a couple of books around to make room on the bookshelf for a cup of hot coffee or tea.

Following my dreams (part 2)

2011-01-17T16:47:00.002-05:00

I did it! (I can't believe I did it...) I rented a building for my book store!

If you've read this blog before, you know about my obsession with books and how they seem to (ahem) follow me home. I guess I've dreamed for years about owning a book store, but I consciously didn't think it would ever happen. My subconscious, however, has been acquiring books by the hundreds over the past few months.

As I worked at the newspaper last summer, a couple of neighboring stores left and I watched the empty spaces. Months passed. I knew I could get a decent rent, and last week I finally contacted the realtor.

You may be thinking: Beth, didn't you just start your dream job as an archives assistant last week? Yes. I love that job! But here's the catch — it's only 10 hours a week. Oh, I have a couple of other jobs, including freelance writer and proofreader, but they're sporadic. I'm hoping to build this shop into something steady. And as the owner, I can set the hours around other commitments.

It's pretty scary, though. I'll have a lease (I'm committed, now!). I need carpet, shelves... electricity, phone... a long list of expenses and things to do. Here's what it looks like: almost a blank slate.

The space next door had more outlets (I looked at that for you, writer buddies!) and water options, but I liked the character of this space better, including the arch on the right and a small storage room. This one needs more work, but it has a more comfortable, homey feel.

I'm not worried about inventory, although that could change after I set things up and actually see what I have. I've already lined up a couple of venues where I can get more, including a large book sale later this month. I can't wait to get the boxes of books out of my house and put everything in order for people to enjoy.

I'll be surrounded by books at both jobs. It doesn't get much better than that!

Following my dreams (part 1)

2011-01-16T19:47:00.001-05:00

I started working at my dream job last week. No, not astronaut — the other one! I'm the new Archives Assistant at the Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College. I get to put my Quaker history knowledge to use and learn more, as a job!

FHC has always been one of my favorite places as a genealogist, but I've already learned that it's not a genealogical library, it's an archives. The difference is that they collect books, documents, and items related to Quakers, and Guilford College, and that's it. Although there are plenty of family histories and local history books, they don't collect all the state and federal censuses or other general records.

I spent my first day going through old issues of the N.C. Yearly Meeting's newsletter (1940s to 1980s) to get them ready to bind into a book. I saw lots of pictures that I recognized, from meeting houses to my childhood pastor. It was fun to see photos of people I know now, back when they were first starting out in ministry, before they had any gray hair.

My homework

This week I manned the research room, which was pretty quiet because the few researchers were absorbed in their work and didn't need much help. When things are quiet, I'm supposed to read books about archiving, which is something I've always wanted to learn. When I need to stretch, I catch up on the genealogy newsletters by the door or send myself on a brief scavenger hunt through the family histories and indexes.

I'm surrounded by history. Life is very good.

(Tomorrow: pursuing another dream)

Books in strange places

2011-01-12T21:42:00.000-05:00

On my way home, I took the old highway for a change and saw a huge banner across one of the furniture showroom buildings: "Going Out of Business Sale." Locals in the High Point area don't usually buy from the showrooms because of the tourist prices, but a sale is a sale, and I need bookshelves for my future book store. I decided to go in and look around.

The sales people were very eager to assist me. When a young man named John said he could knock $1,000 off the price of this sofa or chair, I knew I wasn't going to find the kind of bargain I was looking for. But I decided to browse around the store, just in case. Lots of elegant stuff, fun to look at. What was that? I backtracked and found a couple of old books they had used for decor. And a couple more over here. I looked through them: mostly single volumes of encyclopediae and Reader's Digest books. They were scattered all over the store.

I made a circuit back to the entrance and decided to check out a few more books on a table before I made my getaway past the antsy staff. These weren't encyclopediae. But they weren't in English, either. John saw me pause and bounced over. Each book had a plastic-coated price just like the furniture. I held one up and asked him what he would take for it. The answer was very reasonable.

"We've got some more old books in the back, if you're interested," he said. I followed him to an office area, where they had stacks of readable decor on a table and a shelf. He let me look through them and I walked out with an armful.

I don't know the difference between Norwegian, Swedish or Icelandic, but the language was something in that area. I picked up an Ayn Rand and a few others that just looked interesting, including an 1899 text about horses and hooves. I also weighed my arms down with a London tome listing all of the ships in the world in 1964 — before computers kept up with that sort of thing.

Does this only happen to me? Anybody else walk into other types of stores and walk out with old books?

Books at the Bouldin House

2011-01-09T21:41:00.000-05:00

OK, I did that thing again. That buying books instead of food thing. I was about to start two part-time jobs (finally!), but I just couldn't get rid of the bookstore idea. I had almost forgotten about last weekend's auction at the Bouldin House, a historic bed & breakfast that is up for sale. The auction had already started and I was just finishing my breakfast when I saw a reminder online. They advertised furnishings, appliances. No books were mentioned. But it was a lovely house and I wanted to see what they had. So I went.

They had books. I saw one or two crates I was interested in and tried to keep track of them as the helpers carried them down. I didn't want to accidently bid on the ones full of magazines or old software boxes. I didn't have a choice though, because they put all four large bins up for one sale.

I got all four, for a decent price.

There were some great buys at the auction, and a few things sold at higher prices. This is furniture country, and a friend of mine got a nice bedroom set for her daughter. It was entertaining to watch her with a cell phone to her ear, trying to hear a family member while keeping up with the auctioneer. Our youth group happened to be there, selling hamburgers from the large wraparound porch, and other people I knew showed up to check out the bargains.

I waited around to try for a comfy kitchen chair, but of course it went with an entire set which was out of my league. I bid on a couple of benches that went up in price, but finally got a large ottoman. Then I started bidding on a large, very nice rug. I never thought I'd get it, but the auctioneer nudged me and I knew it was worth something. The other bidder gave in and I ended up getting it for one-fifth of the sale price on the tag. When I got it home — my car was full by now — I looked at the tag. Did I mention this was furniture country? With all the design and carpet businesses, too? I found myself the proud owner of a new, hand-woven oriental rug from India, that I had bought at one-twentieth of its original price.

It's a very large, very nice rug. For the bookstore. That I don't have. Yet.

Oh, and the books. Yes, there were a few magazines and useless software guides. What drew my interest were the coffee table books about local cities. I'm hoping those alone will pay for the rest of the books. Now, here's the hard part about bookselling. High Point, Reflections of the Past had old photos of familiar places, including the Bouldin House.

The idea of bookselling is that you're supposed to sell the books. But I wanted to keep this one. I looked through the crates and — voila! There was more than one! This time, at least, I get to have my cake and eat it too.

I was pleasantly surprised to find travel and history, as well as a few mysteries. Another book tempted me: A Museum of Early American Tools. I tried to tell myself that I couldn't keep everything. But then I saw drawings of tanning tools and thought, that's just what I need for my novel! One of the main characters is a tanner. So Tools stays, at least for now.

Movies of 2010

2011-01-07T07:07:00.002-05:00

I watched a lot of movies in 2010, most of them at home on Netflix, because I don't have TV reception or cable. Lately I've been watching the series Lois and Clark for my suppertime entertainment (love it!). Sometimes I watch The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I didn't realize it was a series, but the book has a lot of short stories in it and they filmed it as separate episodes. I like the African music, accents, and unique characters. I also liked Who Do You Think You Are?, but only saw two episodes.

These are the movies I would label:

Awesome! (I would watch these again)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (subtitled, Swedish). Pretty brutal, definitely not for kids nor the faint of heart. But I just finished the book, and I'd say the movie is even better, with lots of minor changes like a revision.
Oklahoma! Hugh Jackman. Talent, talent, talent. And fun.
Up! For laughing and crying. Like falling out of your chair laughing. Appropriate for watching with family/friends/kids.
Captains Courageous with Spencer Tracy. Wow! Powerful movie about a boy who starts out as a rowdy troublemaker and accidently becomes a crewmember on a whaling ship.
Eat Drink Man Woman. (subtitled, Chinese) About three very different sisters, who are wondering which one of them will be stuck taking care of their aging father. Meanwhile, he's wondering how long before he can get them out of the house. Lots of lovely food.
Jodhaa Akbar (subtitled, Indian) Sweeping epic, love story, traitors, religious tolerance, sword fights — it's all there and very well done. And not all of the sword fights are between husband and wife.
Ben Hur with Charlton Heston.

Really enjoyed: The Last Airbender, Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr. & Jude Law), Lawrence of Arabia, Notorious (Hitchcock), The Forbidden Kingdom (a little campy, but Jackie Chan and Jet Li — what's not to like?), National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (old books!), Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (Bollywood humor/drama that reminded me of Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor), The Big Sleep (Bogart and Bacall), Julie and Julia

A bit dark: The Constant Gardener (not a happy story at all), Sherlock Holmes: The Sign of Four, No Man of Her Own with Barbara Stanwyck. I wasn't too crazy about any of these. The last one finally has a happy ending, but they sure go through a lot of misery to get there.

Enjoyed, but rather shallow: The Proposal (Sandra Bullock), The Art of Travel (gratuitous nudity), Sky High (has some redeeming angst and morals), Journey to the Center of the Earth (Brendan Fraser), Duck Soup (Marx brothers), Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Inspector Gadget, Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, Flight Plan (OK, these last two aren't shallow; I liked them OK but don't need to see them again.)

None of them were really awful, but some of the films really stand out and stick with you, while others are just a way to spend time.

Books of 2010

2011-01-05T07:00:00.002-05:00

It's hard to count exactly how many books I've read this year, because I started some of them in 2009, but I think substantially more than last year — approximately 20. Wow! Instead of just listing them in order, I've put my 2010 reads into categories to share.

Books that totally drew me in (4 or 5 stars): The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Vulcan! (an old Star Trek fan-fic paperback), Outlander by Diana Gabaldon (yes, I am an Outlander newbie), The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog by Elizabeth Peters

Books I read part of and probably won't finish (more for reference): Get a Freelance Life, Great Private Collections, Start Your Own Retail Business 

Children's books: Stuart Little: Stuart at the Library (got great reviews from my nephew), Llama Llama Holiday Drama   (reviews pending)

Books I enjoyed (3 stars): The Bourne Legacy, The Exile by Diana Gabaldon (the new graphic novel), The Hippopotamus Pool by Elizabeth Peters, The Day the Falls Stood Still, SOS by Barbara Arntsen (a mystery set in the shagging subculture of Carolina beaches), Books of the Century by N.Y. Public Library, Scratch Beginnings

History, historical fiction and research for my writing: The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, My Folks Don't Want Me To Talk About Slavery (oral history from former slaves, recorded in the 1930s), The Peaceable Kingdom by Jan de Hartog, Roots by Alex Haley, The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate. Most of these were excellent. I read The Peaceable Kingdom, about early Quakers, as research for my historical novel. It was much more of a page-turner than I had expected — and there wasn't anything peaceable about it. Roots was also for research. I read Haley's work for the first time, but with a writer's eyes. Black Beard was an example of what not to do as a genealogical writer. The author put a lot of work and research into the book — and made it as boring and confusing as possible. He seemed to be trying to write a Discovery Channel special, where you try to stall your audience until the end and drag in every useless bit of information as you stall them. It took me all year to plow through this frustrating, but pretty, book.

Books that made me think, a lot: The Last Lecture, Mutant Message Down Under  

Books for encouragement: Peaks and Valleys, Fearless by Max Lucado (almost finished)

  Books I read and wished I hadn't: The Penwyth Curse. I picked up this audio fantasy for my trip to New York and I was stuck with it during the long drive. It was basically porn. I won't be choosing any more of Catherine Coulter's books.

  Books I've started (you may hear more about these later): Arctic Ireland, This Book Collecting Game (1928), Deep River Quarterly Meeting (1919 history)   

2010 wrap-up

2011-01-02T14:41:00.000-05:00

It seems like everybody is making their goals for 2011, but I need a few days — or months — to recover from the ones I made in 2010. I just finished number 4 on Dec. 31, after burning the midnight oil all week. Here's how I did:

2010 Goals (highest priorities in blue)
1. Finish novel. Not finished. I worked pretty consistently on this the first half of the year, thanks to some friends from NaNoWriMo who met for weekly write-ins all year long! But last summer I hit a mental wall with my story and hurt my shoulder so bad I couldn't type, so I had to take a break. I just started working on it again two weeks ago.

2. Declutter. Not finished. One step forward and two steps back. I made a little progress, then left my day job and moved all my newspaper files home. I've also been acquiring books, as if I'm going to open up a bookstore or something...

3. Get published in a magazine. Not accomplished. I sent one query and never followed up. But this was a lower priority item.

4. Make a Storybook for a relative who had a big birthday this fall. Done! This involved scanning Daddy's negatives from the 1950s and getting names and information. After my injury, a broken scanner, and then a new scanner that wouldn't work, most of this was done in the past few weeks.

5. Make a Storybook of my trip to Ireland. Done. I finished this last summer, thanks to the deadline of a prepaid coupon.

6. Index the 18th-century church records from the meeting in Ireland. Not finished. But I made good progress on this the first half of the year, with 321 pages of handwritten documents indexed so far.

7. Run in a 5K. Done. I was so busy I suddenly had two weeks to go with no training, so I had to walk quite a bit, but I finished! Hopefully this year I will walk less.

8. Go on a mission trip. Done. In March I went with the Friends Disaster Service to help build a house in Jean Lafitte, Louisiana. People there are still trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina.

9. Most of my minor goals fell by the wayside, partly because I focused on the major goals, which is good, and possibly because they weren't specific enough. I did blog and network more than last year and I'm starting to get a better handle on the time it takes to do that. I did not market my first book, work very well on my direct sales business or scrapbook the past few years. I did manage to visit some of my older relatives, something that's very important but often gets pushed to the back burner.

I was distracted by some new goals that popped up, such as traveling to New York and Florida and looking for a job. Thankfully, I'll be starting two part-time jobs this week, and I'm excited about both of them. I also wrote a draft memoir (56,000 words!) for NaNoWriMo in November.

I know I will want to focus on my novel, and there may be a major trip this spring... But I plan to see what the new work routine is like and "let the dust settle" before I plan out 2011.

BBC Top 100 Books

2010-12-23T10:56:00.000-05:00

I've been spending an inordinate amount of time lately reading bookish blogs. When I ran across The Written Nerd and saw Nevil Shute's name on a list of books, I had to join in the fun. The author listed BBC's top 100 books and said:

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses...

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

(Actually, A Town Like Alice was the movie. The book was titled The Legacy.)

Wow, I thought I was well-read, but now I'm rather humbled. I counted audio books, but not movies. I've seen so many of these as movies that I had to stop and remember if I actually read the book.

A cold day at High Point Museum

2010-12-14T21:11:00.001-05:00

I love to visit the High Point Museum when they have their living history days. This last one was pretty cold, yet a lot of visitors crowded into the Hoggatt House to see spinning, weaving and other crafts.

When I visited the Folk Park in Northern Ireland, the lady told me that it took 10 spinners to keep a (professional) weaver busy. At High Point, the guide reiterated that men usually did the weaving, and it took six women spinning to supply him with thread. She said another way to look at it was that the farmer did his weaving a couple of months in winter, and used up the thread that the family had spun all year.

Between combing the wool or flax, spinning, weaving and sewing, it took a whole year to make a new garment. That's why people didn't have many changes of clothes!

I love to watch people spin; it's almost hypnotic. I think she's using a New Zealand spinning wheel in this picture, which is where most new ones are made. They had a great wheel against the wall, similar to mine, and the lady told me it would likely never be functional because it's missing a part called the "mother." Those parts were delicate and old ones are hard to find. This is a close-up of the mother on her newer wheel. According to the Joy of Handspinning website, the whole assembly is the mother and that spinning part she described is the flyer.

A museum volunteer makes candles.

My aunt was impressed with the children who, dressed in period costumes, were not only making potpourris and candles but also answering questions. One little girl explained that people only took baths a few times a year, so they carried potpourris to hold to their noses against the smell.
We drank some warm wassail and had a great time.

The museum used to say that the Hoggatt House was built in the mid-1700s —about the time Quakers settled in the Piedmont — by my ancestor, Philip Hoggatt. A couple of years ago, they took wood bore tests of the logs and the results indicated that the house is not that old. Now, they say that the house was built in 1801 by one of Philip's other children (not my ancestor).

That may be true, but as I asked one of the volunteers, "What about the provenance?" Scientific tests are great, but that doesn't mean to throw out all the past research, documentation and even oral history.

Maybe I'm in denial. I used to love walking into the Hoggatt House and feeling that connection across the generations, as if a little piece of it belonged to me. But it's still a great place to visit — especially when history comes to life.

NaNoWriMo 2010 wrap-up

2010-12-10T10:33:00.000-05:00

A funny thing happened at the end of nanowrimo 2009 — we didn't stop writing.

Oh, we relaxed over the holidays, and we didn't have that word-count deadline to push for. But two of us were finishing or editing our novels and decided to meet weekly. And two more joined us to work on short stories and writing projects. We met all year in the local Barnes & Noble cafe, and by July, we were psyched for another nanowrimo!

Wrimos at the High Point Library

That excitement carried over into the most active nanowrimo group our region's ever had. In addition to our B&N write-ins, Aislynn and Elizabeth planned Monday night writes at the High Point Library (whilst some Greensboro folks met simultaneously at Panera Bread), Darren planned Sunday write-ins at our traditional nanowrimo coffee dives in G'boro, and I planned (with lots of help) a local Night of Writing Dangerously at the Archdale Library. We had 11 writers typing away at that event, buoyed by pizza, chocolate, coffee, door prizes and wi-fi. We even had a used book sale to browse through during breaks.

Most of us met the "Tentacle challenge" by using tentacles somewhere in our stories!

photo and tentacles by Don Morgan

Since I've been working on the novel about my ancestors for at least two nanowrimos, I took a break this year and wrote a memoir about "my year in a foreign country in the middle of North Carolina." I finished my draft of Siler City Blues with 56,224 words.

Most of it looks awful and boring, but at about 25K words I think I may have written some good stuff. I'll look at it later.

For now, after a four-month break and a lot of nanowrimo inspiration, I'm ready to get back to my novel.

A friendly bookstore on Friendly Avenue

2010-12-08T12:55:00.000-05:00

Greensboro seems to be richer in book stores than I thought. Right across from Guilford College, I had often glimpsed a sign that said "Books" as I drove down Friendly Avenue. That's all I had time to read near that busy intersection, and every time I vowed to check the place out in the future. I finally stopped in this week. I made sure to get in the right lane and found a little parking lot on the side.

Empire Books has been around about five years, according to owner Mark Wingfield. A pile of boxes and books near the entrance instantly caught my attention. He had just acquired the collection of an aviation enthusiast, and the top book was one that I have at home, minus the signatures (I know the subjects, not the author, from my former career in aviation).

Interested, but not wanting to add to my own collection, I turned to the aisles of tall bookshelves and skimmed the good variety of subjects. An old Star Trek fan-fic I had never seen before, Vulcan!, "jumped" into my hands. I didn't see many antiques, but there was a nice history collection and I picked up a couple of the recent non-fiction bestsellers.

I got up my nerve and asked the proprietor if a wanna-be-bookseller could pick his brain. At first he seemed as if he had to tear himself away from the endless work of cataloguing, but he turned out to be very nice. For the first time ever, a professional bookseller took me seriously and answered questions without trying to discourage me. It probably helped that I've been researching the book trade a little and had specific questions — about shelves, online services, full-time bookselling. He gave me some honest answers and recommended a web service, all without any hint of elitism.

I had just come from a job interview and I have another one today, both for part-time positions. If I get both jobs, I won't have time to man a bricks-and-mortar shop. My near-term life and vocation are still in flux. But whatever I decide to do, I'll be visiting Empire Books again.

Arctic Ireland

2010-12-06T21:24:00.000-05:00

You know how you look for a book on Amazon or eBay, knowing that it's probably out of print or hard to find? And sure enough, they don't have any copies, but you can put it on your "wish list." I was looking up something else on Amazon and happened to click on my wish list. To my surprise, several copies of of a book I wanted were now available. No pictures, no "look inside," but one of them was inexpensive and from a highly rated seller, so I ordered it.

Arctic Ireland, The extraordinary story of the Great Frost and Forgotten Famine of 1740-41, by David Dickson, arrived today and I couldn't wait to unwrap it! I wrote earlier this year about that coldest winter, during which my ancestor Joshua English and his family lived in Moate, County Westmeath, Ireland.

I immediately looked in the index for Moate. Sure enough, this book also mentions that 20 houses burned down in that small village during the drought that accompanied the Great Frost. No details, unfortunately. But, although the footnotes are all lumped together by page, I can generally figure out that the source was a Dublin newspaper, which is more than I had before.

Even though there's only that brief mention of Moate, now I have a whole book to read for background information, which will hopefully inspire me to get back to my novel. I took a break from my work-in-progress in August. Now that NaNoWriMo is over (that's a future post), it's time to get back to work.

Amanuensis Monday - Archdale, N.C. in 1902

2010-11-29T09:34:00.003-05:00

From the North Carolina Year Book, 1902.

Randolph County
Justices of the Peace for Trinity Township were W.N. Elder of Maud, J.F. Mendenhall of Thomasville, B. L. Lineberry of Trinity, E.W. Pugh of Progress, W.M. Wilson of Archdale, and R.E. Mendenhall of High Point.

Public School Teachers: [I'm only posting those in the Archdale area]
Farlow, Miss May, Sophia
Elder, Miss Daisy, Archdale
Bulla, Miss Dora, Sophia
Bulla, Miss Bird, Sophia

Schools and Academies: [none in Archdale]

Ministers not in Towns: [none in Archdale]

Physicians not in Towns: J.M. Tomlinson, Archdale.

Factories, Cotton Gins, Cotton Mills, Lumber Plants, Saw Mills: [none]

Merchants not in Towns: S.F. Wall & Co., Sophia

Saloons: [none in Randolph County]

Archdale
Incorporated in 1874.
Population, 182.
Tax rate, 12 and a half c on $100
Town Officers. MAYOR- H.A. Tomlinson
CLERK- W.M. Wilson
TREASURER- W.M. Wilson
TAX COLLECTOR- John F. White
CHIEF OF POLICE- John F. White
BOARD OF ALDERMEN- H.A. Tomlinson, J.M. Tomlinson, T.S. Folwell, Lee Andrews, W.J. Wilson
PUBLIC SCHOOL SUPT. Miss Sallie Redding.
SCHOOL COMMITTEE- L.C. Andrews, E.W. Pugh, H.A. Tomlinson
POSTMASTER- J.M. Tomlinson
R.R. AGENT- A.C. English
EXPRESS AGENT- A.C. English

Ministers and Churches.
FRIENDS- D.C. Cox, Pastor.

Doctors. J.M. Tomlinson

General Merchandise.
H.A. Tomlinson & Co.
Martin Creasy.

Poultry Yards.
Archdale Poultry Yards.

Book sale marathon (continued)

2010-11-24T22:50:00.000-05:00

(Previous posts are here, here and here.)

Saturday morning, before our Maness family reunion, I slipped over to the High Point Library's used book sale. One of the librarians told me they had really cleaned out the stacks, and it was true. The room was so crammed full of books that volunteers were constantly unpacking boxes under the tables and stuffing books in any empty spaces the buyers left behind.

The sale was a treasure trove of nonfiction. I wish I could have arranged to buy the remainders — I could have started my own book store with all those topics! — but alas, somebody else had beat me to it.

The history section caught me right as I came in the door. After browsing through those I remembered I was supposed to be home cooking, so I worked my way around the entire room as quickly as I could through the crowd. My hands were full and my arm was still sore, so I had to pile books in the staff room.

I ended up with biographies and memoirs of Mark Twain, Empress Josephine and Charles Lindbergh. I started to put some books back, thinking I had gone crazy to get so many. But when I saw that paperbacks were five for a dollar, I let myself have whatever I wanted. The only thing wrong was that, as much as I love HPL, when I saw their "Discarded" stamp across the title page of the 100-year-old book on Josephine, I almost fainted. Hopefully it was done by one of the many one-day volunteers and not a librarian.

Among the paperbacks, I stocked up on foreign language guides, from Swahili to Arabic. They had a lot of French literature, too. I made it home in time to cook nostalgic food for our family reunion.

I used to think that if I ever had a book store, I would specialize in antique books. I still think that I would have some, and specialize in history— especially Quaker history and genealogy. But now I want to have a variety of books, used and new, and take advantage of different collections I come across, like all of this science fiction.

Even though the sale at Archdale Library was over, they continued it as a bag sale. I stopped by last week and again today.

Like the Hinshaw church sale, Archdale Library seemed to be heavy on Science Fiction Book Club this year, and I put several in my bag. I brought home a variety of nonfiction, too, from stock car racing to Hopi legends. Since the bag sale was such a good bargain, I picked up whatever caught my eye, with visions of becoming a bookseller.

Amanuensis Monday - Trinity, N.C. in 1902

2010-11-22T08:33:00.006-05:00

From the North Carolina Year Book, 1902.

Randolph County
T.J. Finch, of Wheatmore, was a County Commissioner.
Justices of the Peace for Trinity Township were W.N. Elder of Maud, J.F. Mendenhall of Thomasville, B. L. Lineberry of Trinity, E.W. Pugh of Progress, W.M. Wilson of Archdale, and R.E. Mendenhall of High Point.

Public School Teachers: [I'm only posting those in the Trinity area]
Royalis, Miss Birdie, Trinity
Gibbs, J.E., Trinity
Crater, A.A., Trinity
McCarkle, Miss, Trinity
Ingram, Mrs. L.J., Trinity
Young, Miss Indie, Trinity
Johnson, Miss Rosa L., Trinity
Craven, Mrs. Nannie, Trinity
Heitman, J.F., Trinity
Fearns, Miss Corinna, Hill's Store [I'm not sure where that is]
Thayer, Mrs. W.F., Hoover Hill

Schools and Academies: [none in Trinity]

Ministers not in Towns: METHODIST: C.A. Wood, J.P. Lanning, A.A. Crater, J.F. Heitman, Trinity.

Physicians not in Towns: D. Reid Parker, Trinity.

Factories: Dixie Chair Co., Trinity

Cotton Gins, Cotton Mills, Lumber Plants, Saw Mills: [none]

Merchants not in Towns:
J.L. Hinshaw, Hoover Hill
L.S. Harrelson, Hoover Hill
W.S. Loler, Trinity
B. Parker, Trinity

Saloons: [none in Randolph County]

Trinity
Incorporated in 1869.
Population, 274.
Town Officers. BOARD OF ALDERMEN- J.K. Harris, B. Parker, A.C. English, J.R. Reddick, J.D. Bronne.
POSTMASTER- Miss Amanda Leach
R.R. AGENT- A.C. English
EXPRESS AGENT- A.C. English

Ministers and Churches. METHODIST- G.E. Eaves, Pastor.

Schools and Academies. TRINITY HIGH SCHOOL- A.A. Crater, Principal.

Hotels and Boarding Houses. Parker House.

General Merchandise.
B. Parker.
W. Lohr.
J. Parkin.
W. O. Harris.

Small town reporter covers the big time...

2010-11-19T21:15:00.000-05:00

Click here for a link to my column in the Archdale-Trinity News about my adventures in Florida, covering the final launch of Discovery (which was postponed) from the NASA press room earlier this month.

Book sale marathon

2010-11-17T17:52:00.001-05:00

Friday night, I went to Hinshaw United Methodist Church in Greensboro. It was their 12th annual book sale, although I had never heard of it before — and wouldn't have, except that I saw their flyer on the counter at Pages Past bookshop. Only a few people were there when I arrived, but the crowd steadily grew as I browsed.

They had a good variety, with lots of fiction. As a matter of fact, as I worked my way around the room, I deduced that someone must have emptied out their science fiction book collection.

My arms were getting laden down with books, but the choices included possible first editions by Arthur C. Clarke, Ben Bova and Isaac Asimov. I even grabbed a couple of Harry Potter sequels of the first U.S. printing. I stashed them in a box so I could continue browsing.

The picture shows a two-volume sci-fi collection from 1959, with paper dust jackets. Both contain the tantalizing dedication, "This book is for PHYLLIS as what is not?"

I added some paperback classics (don't we always tell ourselves that we'll read them?) and recent autobiographies of prominent reporters.

My older acquisitions included a Young People's History of North Carolina, published in 1916 with many illustrations and a few photographs, a 1904 (seventh printing) book of etiquette by Emily Holt, and a 1943 "coffee table" book of Literary England Photographs.

My now-heavy box also included a thin paperback of Women's Fashion in England, 1818-1828; The Illustrated History of Britain; and True Tales of the South at War. All pretty irresistible, but I started to worry that I hadn't restrained myself enough.

But when I checked out at less than $40, any remnants of guilt evaporated.

The North Carolina Year Book, 1902

2010-11-15T21:44:00.001-05:00

Somehow or another, even if it was just for a few minutes, I hit all four places that were having book sales last week. Woo-hoo!

I stopped by Pages Past, the antiquarian book store in Greensboro, on Wednesday. I had been drooling over an early 20th-century business directory that I wrote about in an earlier post. It was too expensive, but with the annual sale going on, I dropped in before another appointment, hoping the book was still there.

It was! I grabbed it and went to the counter, since I didn't have time to browse that day. I saw the flyer for the church sale as I waited to make the purchase.

The North Carolina Year Book, 1902, published by The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., lists all the elected officials, business owners, doctors, teachers and ministers - by county - in the state that year.

The statewide lists in the front of the book even include leaders in the Confederate Veterans' organization, the Masons, agriculture, "The Improved Order of Red Men" and the Prohibition movement. The advertisements are interesting, too.

I've been skimming Guilford and Randolph counties and seeing some familiar names. I will post the information for Trinity and Archdale, N.C.

Three cities, four book sales, one morning

2010-11-10T22:07:00.000-05:00

Is it a bibliophile's dream, or nightmare? Three cities, not too far away, four used book sales — all on the same morning, this coming Saturday, Nov. 13! Oh, and did I mention I have a family reunion to get ready for by lunch time?

If you happen to be in the Piedmont Triad area, here are the sales and links for more information. Some of them have preview nights for an admission price and the church sale is also open on Friday night (definitely hitting that!), but they all end Saturday.

Archdale Library - 9 am to 1 pm Saturday, in Archdale

Pages Past, Used and Rare Books - 10 am to 6 pm Saturday (and earlier) in Greensboro

Hinshaw United Methodist Church - 8 am to noon (or 1pm) Saturday (and earlier dates) in Greensboro

High Point Library - 9 am to 3 pm Saturday (yes it's Nov. 13, don't be fooled by the prominent post date), in High Point

A friend of mine gave me a sneak peak into one of these sales earlier this week. There I was, in a roomful of books, all by myself — did he expect me to ever come out?!

Feeling very privileged and not wanting to wear that welcome out, I brought a modest stack up to the counter to purchase and then drove home a happy woman.

I admit I bought a couple of Modern Library classics on spec (in other words, I don't plan to read them but sell them), by Faulkner and Cervantes. I bought a book club collection of James Blish's Star Trek stories. Remember all that fan fiction? I used to devour those in high school. I added a modern reprint of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, because I've heard so many references to it.

I looked at some of the new nonfiction history tomes, and — I couldn't believe it — found an autographed copy of Morgan's Boone. A proof copy of Climbing the Stairs caught my eye because of the Indian films I've been watching and it looked interesting. And finally, I bought The Year of Fog, because I read the back of the book and couldn't wait to find out what happens. Isn't that one of the best reasons to get a book, after all?

So, what do I do? Limited budget, limited hours, and book sales everywhere! I also have to be a proper Southern woman and cook for our family gathering, which I helped orchestrate and have badgered everybody about for the past two months. But since it's not at my house, I could sneak away for an hour or two...

Should I just open my own book store now?

Back in North Carolina

2010-11-07T22:20:00.001-05:00

Just for the record, the space shuttle Discovery launch was scrubbed for this window because of a significant leak that they need to repair. The next opportunity will be Nov. 30 through Dec. 5. You can find updates here. I'll be writing up my experiences as a member of the press at Kennedy Space Center for the newspaper soon, and will post a link here on the Travels with Books blog next week.

I really enjoyed hanging out at KSC all week (much longer than I'd planned!). I also enjoyed camping in my little Scamp, my home away from home. I would have enjoyed it more if I could have unhitched and stayed in one spot. Because of weekend vacationers and other people who came in to see the launch, they were playing musical sites at the campground and I had to reposition almost daily. I brought it with me to KSC several days and got funny looks and comments from some of the guards.

I returned to N.C. to find National Novel Writing Month in full gear. This is the most active we have ever been in the Piedmont area (officially the N.C. Greensboro region on the website), with events scheduled on Monday nights at both the High Point Library and Panera Bread in Greensboro, Thursday mornings at the High Point Barnes & Noble, and Sunday afternoons at various coffee shops around UNC-G. I think there are more write-ins at GTCC, too.

I didn't meet my quota as I was driving up and down the southeast, but I did work on my story a little in the campground in South Carolina on the trip home. I also stayed up last night to take advantage of the time change — way too late — but I was determined to turn that little box green! Hopefully I will catch up with all of these write-ins going on.

People think I'm on vacation...

2010-11-05T11:37:00.003-04:00

I hope my genealogy/history followers will forgive me for straying into the technical world for a few days. I did plan to stop in South Carolina to do some research in the USC rare manuscripts room, but they're closed on weekends and I'm going to have to postpone that. It's been a few years since I worked in the scientific and technical world, and I've had an exciting time around all this cutting edge technology, surrounded by space buffs.

As I sent in articles and talked to people back home about the many NASA briefings I attended, they kept telling me to relax, and enjoy my vacation. Vacation? Well, I am enjoying it, but I came down here to cover the shuttle launch and that's been nicely busy. I didn't have the budget nor inclination to go to DisneyWorld this time, and I didn't bring appropriate clothes (in November) for the beach, although I did enjoy walking on the beach and I stuck my toes in the Atlantic.

During my big vacation in Ireland last year, I went to libraries and collections and researched every chance I got. That's why I went. I still enjoyed it, and took lots of pictures. Am I too intense?

I guess the line between work and play is so smudged that other people don't even see it.

Isn't that how it should be?

(POSTSCRIPT, written Nov. 6) Actually, I did get to relax between briefings and stories. My sore shoulder got a break from working at a desk, although backing up the car frequently was difficult (you just can't back right-handed). Best of all, my brain got a rest from my recent busy schedule and to-do lists. I could sit there in the camper, or on the beach some days, or even in the press room, and just let my mind wander.
Funny how, to rest your body, you slow down your movements. But when you rest your mind, it speeds up and seems to run faster.

Discovery

2010-11-04T11:18:00.000-04:00

With the shuttle launch postponed 'til Thursday (now Friday as of this posting) we waited all day around the press room for the photo opp. The NASA team postponed it as they talked about the engine switch and made sure they were ready to go. They were also worried about lightning in the area. But finally they loaded us onto buses and drove us out to Launch Pad 39A. It was dark by the time the Rotating Service Structure rolled back to reveal the Orbiter. I think we were out there an hour, with some photographers clicking the entire time.

Discovery on the launch pad Wednesday night - photo by Elizabeth Saunders

Isn't she beautiful? NASA turned on some massive lights towards the end, and you could see them all the way to the campground.

I kept looking back at Discovery as we rode away, wishing her and the crew bon voyage and praying for a safe trip.

I was tired, I was hungry — and I didn't want to leave.

How I started NaNoWriMo

2010-11-03T14:25:00.001-04:00

I can't think of a better way to start National Novel Writing Month! This was taken early Monday morning, Nov. 1, at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Camping at Cape Canaveral

2010-11-02T15:54:00.003-04:00

Saturday, I attended more NASA briefings, took advantage of the press room wi-fi to check mail and posted an update story for the paper. I stopped at one of the NASA gift shops on the way out. When I was here many years ago, you paid for visitor tickets a la carte, eg. the bus tour or the IMAX movie. But now, you have to pay a $41 for everything and you can't even visit the gift shop without a ticket. Travel Tip: you can go to the Astronaut Hall of Fame and visit their gift shop without a ticket.

I decided to try the public campground at Cape Canaveral because it has beach access. Since it's the county beach and you have to pay to get in, you can't drive in and check it out; I had to pay for the night, cash, without even seeing what it was like. It turned out to be a good gamble.

I'm not very good at backing up the camper. I know to turn the opposite way, but I have normal car mirrors and the Scamp gets cocked very quickly. So my normal procedures look like Snoopy playing ping-pong with himself. I've already learned that people in campgrounds will watch you back into a tree without saying a word. There's some sort of unwritten rule (must be a guy thing) that you have to ask for help. But when you do, you may get more help than you wanted.

I asked a fellow at the adjacent picnic table if he would watch a water pipe to make sure I didn't run over it. Soon I had three young, tipsy British gents assessing the situation. They decided that they could push my little Scamp into the right spot, sans car. I could see that they were eager to try, so I let them. They heaved and pushed — as I silently prayed for the safety of their sandaled feet — and got the camper turned the right way before an unruly hill on the campsite got the better of them. I thanked them and backed the camper up to the electrical outlet, with plenty of distance from the water pipe.

I gratefully set up camp and then went out for supplies. I thought about giving my newfound friends from across the pond a five-pack, but since there were three of them, that would be just wrong. So I gave them half of a 12-pack, which I quietly delivered to the hurtin' pups that were unable to answer their open door in the morning.

Sunday, I investigated the beach. An airshow was just ending, and four Thunderbirds flew in formation right above my head!

The campground is next to cruise ships that tower like high-rise buildings over the trees. I watched several go out.

The weather was perfect, but in my rush to pack (and it being November) I didn't bring a pair of shorts. So I rolled up my jeans and stuck my toes in the Atlantic anyway.

I'm here! Now what?

2010-11-01T16:50:00.000-04:00

After a hectic week, I finally got excited Friday morning as I realized I was going to Florida to not only watch a shuttle launch, but to actually cover one as a member of the press! There had been no time to prepare and I did most of my packing Friday morning. As I printed out the information I would need, I noticed that the Kennedy Space Center pass office was closed on weekends. I called and left a message for the lady in charge of badges, loaded up the camper and finally hit the road around noon.

After about 540 miles of driving, I wasn't in the mood to face a locked restroom and restricted wi-fi, despite my calling ahead with a reservation. So in the morning I took the camper with me as I headed into work, sans shower.

I worried all the way about not being able to get on base. I had called the update number and learned that Monday's launch was postponed to Wednesday, so at least I had some breathing space. With no other plans — and no budget for an $82 day at Disney — my backup plan was to pay the KSC visitor fee and take the tourist tour. A very nice fellow at the badge office gave me directions to the press accreditation office, which was thankfully open on Saturday. I asked the lady there where to find the 11am press conference. She answered, "I thought it was at 10." We both looked at the clock: I had less than 10 minutes.

I made my way to the press area near the huge vehicle assembly building, parked the car and camper and found my way inside. I could hear that the conference had started because they pump the sound out to loudspeakers in the parking lot. I opened the door and walked in to see the press conference in progress — on a large TV screen. Who knew where that lovely room with logos and important people were, that I had seen on TV so many times. They could be anywhere on this huge base!

The NASA folks were really nice. They assigned me my own seat with electricity and wi fi.

And the cafeteria down the road had Starbucks coffee, with free flavors — a Godsend.

I later learned that the briefing room is in the building next door.

Amanuensis Monday - To be young in wartime...

2010-10-25T21:26:00.000-04:00

I don't usually do Amanuensis Monday (did I spell that right? hat tip to genealogical bloggers Randy Seaver and John Newmark), wherein people post a transcript of a historical document. But as I mentioned in my last blog post about an estate auction, I came across this lovely letter from 1942. I don't have any known relatives in it, but it's too juicy — I mean genealogical — to keep to myself.

The letter was posted from Lucille Redding in Trinity, N.C. to Miss Myrtle Grace Edwards in High Point, N.C. I asked around a little to see if anyone knew Lucille Redding, so I could ask if she would mind my posting the contents for all to see. So far, nobody of my acquaintance knows her, at least not by her maiden name, so I'm going to go ahead and share this fascinating slice of local life. If anybody recognizes the names included and takes exception to the letter being made public, or if a family member would like to have the letter, e-mail me at ebeth2000 at earthlink dot net.

Monogrammed stationery: "N.L.R."

November 12, 1942

Hello Myrtle Grace,

I know you will be surprised to hear from me so soon after I got your letters, but I'm really writing this time, believe it or not!

I really don't have very much to say, but hope you will forgive me for waiting so long to write.

I am staying with Clifford and Ruth and Branson now. The baby is the cutest thing, but now he is trying to cry. He is 2½ months old. I stay here all the time except on Saturday Nights, when I stay at home.

Yes, I'm still working. But I work at the Holly Shop. I like to work there a lot. We have good times in the store, and some of the funniest experiences.

Did you know Short Cumbie was home on leave last week? We talked with him a couple of times and he likes the Navy fine. I saw Clifton Charles when he was in too.

I haven't heard anything from Phillip since October 12, and I think he may be right over there where the second front was opened.

I had been going with Raymond Tatum some since school was out. He left for the Air Corps October 22 and I've gotten a letter from him almost every day since he has been gone. I got two this morning.

I also hear from Carl Myers real often. I got a real sweet letter from him yesterday. He is in the Army in San Francisco. He expects to stay for the duration, because he works in the office there. He said about all he has to do is drive for the Colonel and Major. I believe he is trying to get serious — finally — if you know what I mean.

Bill Lackey and John Younts have to go back to the Army in a few days. Frank Grant has joined the Air Corps. He gave Elizabeth the prettiest diamond for her birthday, but they are planning to wait until after the War.

Virginia Sink and Bernice Clapp are married. Bernice has been married for sometime. Virginia was married October 30.

I have been seeing Magalene real often until about the last two weeks. Right after Nellie came home (just for week-ends) we would go see M. on Sunday afternoons, but since Nellie's Mother and daddy have moved, I haven't seen either of them on Sundays.

I went to school this afternoon. It really doesn't seem like the same place.

Everett and Jack Caughron were here not so long ago. Everett had to go to Asheboro to be examined.

"Red" McKenzie is home now. I think he is going to stay.

Lottie and Harvie were home 2 weeks ago. Lottie stayed until last Sunday. Harvie called Sunday Night after she had gone and asked if she had left yet, and if she hadn't he was coming here.

Daddy went to the hospital in Winston Tuesday. He came back this afternoon. He went for treatment and to find what is wrong with his back. It has been bothering him right much recently.

Well, I have about four other letters to write, so maybe I better sign off.

I guess you already know that Harry Land is married. I haven't seen him but once since the day. He was with his wife (I guess) and he said, "Why, hello, Lucille." Just like he was surprised to death, and his face turned so red it was pitiful. I bet I know what he thought about, and I know I did.

Bunky and Bobby are living near Salt Lake City, Utah now.

I must close now, so write soon, and tell me all the news from down that way.

Love,

Lucille

The lure of antiques

2010-10-19T20:47:00.005-04:00

I like to venture out to estate auctions, when I can, although I know they can be dangerous to the wallet. When an ad appeared in our local paper for a sale just down the road, with an old spinning wheel as one of the attractions, I called my uncle as an accomplice and we decided to make a morning out of it.

To make a long story shorter, we had a great time browsing and people watching, but I didn't get the spinning wheel — a small flax wheel in good shape which went for nearly $200. (I should mention here that I already have a great wheel, that I got for a steal at another estate auction!) I also bid on a lovely secretary, the kind with a glass-door bookshelf above the hideaway desk. I wish I could post a picture for you (lesson learned: bloggers should take pictures even if they don't buy anything). The secretary was skinny, still had the key to its desk, and had that dark, almost black finish that I see in very old furniture in this area. And here I'll mention that dealers were present — I could have bid a little higher, but I didn't stand a chance.

I did find one thing, though, and came home satisfied without losing all my money! A stack of old postcards; I had seen only the top one because they were in a glass case until time to sell. I was very happy as I flipped through my new treasure to find that many of them were local. They had been written on and posted (with 1 cent stamps), dating around 1900 to 1909. The addresses consisted of just a person's name and the city — that's all they needed back then.

Postcards - several are 100 years old.

A few were actual photographs, with that negative sheen on the dark portions.

A few birthday cards and letters were thrown in the lot. One letter, however, was written not in the early 1900s, but during World War II. The contents are so fascinating — not only great genealogical information, but also juicy gossip from a young local woman — that I'm considering posting the contents. But I need to check with a few people, first, because the author is local and may still be living.

Another thing I noticed was the use of the word "thy" on a couple of postcards, by the same writer to a friend. It could have been an endearment, but with the Quaker presence in this area and the timeframe, I wouldn't be surprised if the author spoke and wrote the second person familiar all the time.

Postcard of the Randolph County Courthouse, which was just renovated.

Our oldest photographs and 'The Last Muster'

2010-10-05T22:25:00.004-04:00

I thought that photographs from the Civil War era were old. That is, until I saw Maureen Taylor’s latest book, “The Last Muster: Images of the Revolutionary War Generation.”

The Revolutionary War? We didn’t have photography back then, did we?

Well, no. Aside from a few experiments in earlier years, photography as we know it started about 1839 and quickly spread around the western world. Itinerant photographers appeared in the major transportation centers of North Carolina, such as Fayetteville and Raleigh, in the 1840s. A father-and-daughter team opened up a gallery in Greensboro in 1851. And in those years, people who were born in the mid- to late 1700s were still alive.

People who lived through and remembered the American Revolution.
People who had their pictures taken.

Who better than Taylor, nationally known as “The Photo Detective,” (@PhotoDetective) to seek out those early pictures of older Americans? For her book, she verified the subjects and painstakingly documented their lives.

The photographs include several Quakers, which give us a connection to the religious group who settled Bush Hill (now Archdale). Unfortunately the book does not include an index of place names, but connections to North Carolina include Waxhaw, an unnamed Moravian community and Dolley Madison, who was born in Greensboro.

Most of Taylor’s subjects, however, lived in New England. So I set off on a quest to find one of these early photographs of someone from our region. I figured that the Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College, one of my favorite repositories of local history, would be a great starting place.
I found several photographs of early settlers around the Randolph-Guilford county line, such as William B. Hockett (1799-1880, Centre Friends area) and Allen U. Tomlinson (1802-1879, Archdale), but they were too “young.” Finally, I came across a file about Nathan Hunt. I’d seen a large portrait of Hunt many times in the library, but I didn’t know much about him.

Hunt, who was a young man during the Revolutionary War, was a Quaker minister who lived next to Springfield Meeting. Even though some of his journals were accidentally burned, there’s a wealth of documentation and stories about his life. Not only was he an interesting man who traveled extensively and witnessed a lot of history in his 95 years, he was also my kinsman: my first cousin, seven times removed.

Guilford had another painting of Hunt in storage and several sketches. I also found what looked like a very old, deteriorated photograph in the file folder.

It was heavy, like glass, but it didn’t look like glass. Like an ambrotype, the faded image could be seen better when placed on black paper, but the image was positive and ambrotypes are negative. And it wasn’t thin enough or the image sharp enough to be a daguerrotype.

I felt pretty silly when, weeks later, I found out the picture was actually an early 20th-century printing plate, probably used for a newspaper article. Here I was, trying to figure out which type of old photograph it was — no wonder it didn’t meet up with the historical descriptions!

Images obtained courtesy of the Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College, Greensboro, N.C.
No use or distribution without permission.

I suspect that the large, intriguing portrait of Hunt from the 1930s was painted from a daguerrotype, but I couldn’t find any evidence. Perhaps if I searched for a long, long time, as I do in my own family genealogy quests, I could find out. But I’m on deadline and the paper must go out.

That doesn’t mean I came home empty-handed. As modest as Quakers were — they didn’t even write names on their tombstones until the 19th-century — I am amazed that we have so many likenesses of Nathan Hunt, who saw the American Revolution first hand. His life is wonderfully documented, including letters and part of a journal that still exist. A summary of Hunt’s life is found here.

But the hunt for that one daguerrotype, without success, shows me just how hard Maureen Taylor must have worked to pursue 70 of these photos and the stories behind them for her book. She found additional images of people who lived through our “unillustrated war,” but finding documentation about each person was an even greater challenge than finding the photos.

“The vast majority of these individuals were not wealthy, could not write, and left no written record of their life,” Taylor wrote in her introduction.

I like the variety of the people she did find — different nationalities, races and economic groups. A few of her subjects lived to be more than 100 years old. The colorful stories of their involvement in the Revolutionary War even include a few women.

And it’s the stories that give life to the faces.

“The Last Muster” is available through www.kentstateuniversitypress.com and amazon.com. Taylor’s previous book, “Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photographs,” is on display at the Heritage Research Center at High Point Library.

Update: I received a copy of the Last Muster to review for the Archdale-Trinity News. I was under no obligation about the content of the review, nor to include it on my blog.

Writers Police Academy - Part 2

2010-10-03T14:29:00.001-04:00

Saturday started early. We all knew there was some kind of surprise planned for the writer attendees. As the back door guard, I got to hear the inside scoop as the SERT commander briefed the players, including a fake "writer" who slipped into the group of attendees and got shot by a disgruntled "student," who then took a whole room full of people hostage.

The SERT team came into the building with their practice guns and... I didn't hear all the negotiations, but the good guys won! I think they negotiated with the shooter during the first scenario, and shot him during the second.

EMS came in and treated the shooting victim and whisked him out on a stretcher. All that excitement, and that was in the morning before any of the classes!

I got to attend a session with N.Y. undercover cop Marco Conelli. I'm in awe of what he has to go through, not just being in disguise, but walking into dangerous situations and having to know the right information to convince the bad guys that he's just another druggie. He must have nerves of steel!

Elizabeth Owens gets her book signed.

Some of the attendees got to do FATS - firearms training in a simulator. My fellow volunteer Elizabeth and I didn't go in, but we got to guard the door and chat with Jeffery Deaver and other folks in the hall.

Thriller author Jeffery Deaver (@JefferyDeaver) was our keynote speaker at the banquet Saturday night. He was chosen to write the next James Bond novel, and he told us he's already got the first draft completed, among his many projects. He was very nice to chat with, and we had our pictures taken with him later at the book signing.

Elizabeth Saunders and Jeffery Deaver

It was an exciting, informative and very full weekend. Thriller, mystery, cozy, true crime or anything related writers were loving it. I overheard a few networking about romance and urban fantasy and I even met another historical fiction writer. My writer buddies and I got to hang out, meet writers and have a great time. CJ Lyons (@cjlyonswriter), a medical thriller author who happened to sit at our banquet table, gave us tips about pitching.

Aspiring authors Aislynn, Elizabeth and Elizabeth

Here's more about Writers' Police Academy 2010 on Lee Lofland's blog.

Writers' Police Academy - Part 1

2010-09-30T13:30:00.002-04:00

I had an awesome weekend at Writers' Police Academy, organized by Lee Lofland (@LeeLofland), the High Point Library and Guilford Technical Community College. The Academy is oriented toward mystery and thriller writers, but it's fun for any writer. My Thursday morning writer buddies and I volunteered as helpers, so we got to hear some of the great speakers and learn from law enforcement and emergency personnel.

Friday morning included a parking lot full of those folks — and their toys — from Guilford County Sheriff and High Point Police to fire department, bomb squad, SERT (formerly SWAT team) and crime scene investigation. I kept going back to the CSI table, where he had surveillance equipment, fingerprint dust, etc. Best of all, the folks in uniform were there to answer all kinds of questions, each one surrounded by writers with pad and pen in hand. It was fun to eavesdrop on the conversations, realizing that many of the little details would go into somebody's next mystery!

We talked to a man who was the negotiator in hostage situations; he was very interesting. He had been involved in a local murder investigation some years ago that took three and a half years and "divine intervention" to finally solve.

I got to sit in on a lecture by New York medical examiner Jonathan Hayes (@PreciousHayes). It wasn't as gory as I had imagined — he keeps it that way on purpose — but he was interesting and even funny.

Lee Lofland

I went home for our evening break to nurse a migraine, but rallied for the fascinating late-night session with Lee Lofland, former police investigator and author of The Graveyard Shift blog. He told the story of a murder in Ohio that seemed unsolvable, but the investigator on the case had that gut feeling about who did it. The murderer eventually confessed for a deal with the DA, and the evidence finally started pouring in.

Mountain Book Trek

2010-09-16T11:44:00.002-04:00

On my way home from Black Mountain I paid a visit to a couple of used book stores. I started at Black Mountain Books, right there in town. Unfortunately, opening time was more than an hour away, and I had a long drive ahead of me so I didn't want to wait. I visited the store last year. It has a nice selection of antiques along with a back room of newer titles, and the proprietress is very knowledgeable and helpful.

My main goal was formerly called the Little Switzerland Book Exchange. It's way off the beaten track, as far as the highway goes, but right off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had called ahead because the last time I'd been there, two years ago, the place was for sale. I found out that it had been sold but was still in business.

I like what the new owners have done. They've rearranged and turned over a little, enough that I wasn't looking at the same titles year after year like before, and they've turned the counter into a mini-coffee shop.

It's now called Little Switzerland Books and Beans. The only bad thing was that most of the antique books were gone - they mentioned that the former owner took a lot of stock with him to his Asheville shop - but they have some sets that didn't interest me. They've turned a back room into a wooden boat shop.

They're still working on their organization; I saw one author's name in three different rooms. I didn't find the Diana Gabaldon that I was looking for. I did pick up a few things I wasn't looking for, as usual, including a children's book, Clocks Tell Time. Its two-color print looks older than its 1960 date. I grabbed The Marx Bros. Scrapbook, loaded with photos and mostly written be Groucho. I put back two book-collecting references, because he wanted the original price even though they were several years old and one is now online.

A coffee table book, that I would have expected a high price on, caught my eye. Great Private Collections is like a museum where most people would never be allowed in. I got it for a steal, and bonus: I love books that have newspaper clippings or letters stuffed in them. In this one, somebody had saved articles about these rich people and their collections, including Christie's and Sotheby's estate auctions.

My final purchase was This Book-Collecting Game, by A. Edward Newton, author and bookseller. This doesn't look like a how-to book, but more like a funny memoir along the lines of Larry McMurtry's Books: A Memoir. This...Game was written in 1928, has caricatures of men arguing on the front, and has an unusual combination of a paper dustjacket and matching case, although the case is a bit beat up.

I had lunch next door before starting back down the mountain. The book store shares a building with a great, frou-frou restaurant that boast things like homeade soups and smoked trout. Most of the Labor Day visitors came by motorcycle, enjoying the wind-y roads and perfect weather.

Black Mountain 2010

2010-09-09T12:02:00.002-04:00

I spent last weekend at the beautiful Blue Ridge Assembly in Black Mountain. I enjoyed seeing lots of friends at Yearly Meeting.

It's a 3 or 4 hour drive - depending on how many wrong turns I make - so I usually try to check out the used book stores while I'm in the mountains. I had planned to do that Monday, on the way home, but this year I actually bought more books before I even left Yearly Meeting. They set up a Quaker bookstore at the back of the meeting room, and there's always something I can't resist. I mean, I'm a genealogist and Quaker historian, and here's a whole room full of Quaker books! (Look for a future post on links and resources for Quaker books.)

I quickly had an armload of books, and had to put some back - these are all new, with "new" prices.

I bought the recently reprinted Autobiography of Allen Jay. That name is so common around my hometown that I thought he was local. But he was actually one of the northern Quakers that came down after the Civil War to help people in North Carolina rebuild. Many had moved to Indiana and other places to escape slavery laws, and more people wanted to leave after the devastation of the war. Because of Allen Jay and people like him who encouraged people to stay, we still have a thriving Quaker community in the Piedmont.

View of Asheville Hall from the creek below it

I also got Self-supported Ministers: Lest We Forget by Billy Britt, because I know the author and I might know some of the people included in this collection of biographies; and The Quakers in America by Thomas D. Hamm. I've met Thomas a couple of times and he is a wealth of fascinating Quaker history. I had been looking forward to his book and hadn't realized that it's already been out a while.

I put back George Fox's Book of Miracles. I had heard of the book in other writings, but hadn't realized that it no longer exists. This new book is a re-created version based on an extant index of the original. After skimming through it, I realized much of the content is about the scholarly process of filling in the information, which was still interesting to me as a writer.

I wasn't really tempted by another book of re-created information - because of the price, that is - but I might have to buy it someday. It's about Centre Friends Meeting in Guilford County, whose minutes were destroyed in a fire. The author has not only tried to re-create those business records, but has written a thorough genealogical reference using land records, family stories and photographs. It's pretty impressive!

Who are the Quakers?

2010-09-07T21:55:00.002-04:00

This blog normally focuses on genealogy, writing and travel, with some Quaker history thrown into those first two topics. This week, however, I felt a need to write about the Quaker present, the time in which I live.

I just got back from North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Friends United Meeting). For non-Quakers, that's like an annual statewide conference. Saturday, we approved a vision statement. You probably have no idea how controversial this has been. One was proposed about five years ago and shot down. For one thing, Quakers don't have a creed - special words that you have to say to belong. For another thing, a group of people were at that meeting years ago who no longer believed in the Bible. Now, we still have debates among our members about accuracy and translations and such, but this was a very vocal, loud group that caused a lot of dissension. Their congregation left FUM the following year.

I'm pleased that we passed the statement and I want to explain why. Because the Religious Society of Friends doesn't have a creed, is a pretty tolerant group and wants to welcome everyone, and no longer "disowns" people, quite a variety of people now claim that faith. I knew that that variety included programmed and unprogrammed, congregations with pastors and those without, and those with liberal beliefs and those with conservative beliefs.

What I didn't know until recently (and it blew my mind) was about people who have become non-Christian Friends. How can people who have absolutely opposite beliefs claim to be part of the same group? Well, it's not like the word Quaker is copyrighted. Like any other denomination, if a group of people disagree with their church, they simply leave and start another church, often under a related name. And our terminology - words like the "Inner Light" and "listening within" - can easily be confused with Eastern or New Age teachings.

It's not just the atheists or Buddhists or others who are damaging the reputation of this Christian Protestant denomination, it's the propagation of that information by bloggers and tweeters who, innocently looking for information about Quakers, have found those sites and are shaking their heads and telling their readers that Quakers no longer believe in Christ.

Here I am, a Christian who happens to be a Quaker, and I go read another writer's blog and the author says that modern Quakers no longer believe in Christ. "I guess they've changed," she writes. I was stunned. I don't know how many people read her blog, but now they all think that, too.

In modern marketing terminology, Quakers have a serious branding problem.

At yearly meeting, some people stood up and expressed hesitations because they don't want a creed. Some stood up and wanted to add or change a word here and there. One stood up and asked, why did we need to do this in the first place? I stood up and told about my internet experience, implying that those of us who are debating about the right words, for years, are getting outpaced by individuals who are sending false generalizations out to the world.

When we finally approved it, there was unity - a sense of peace among everybody, with no after-the-meeting grumbling. I commend our clerk, Judy Ritter, for letting people speak their concerns and for discerning the sense of the meeting. Here is the vision statement - it's not a creed, but more of a goal, and there are some who would still disagree with a word here or there, but it tells the world that there's at least one group of Quakers, modern Quakers, who believe.

A Vision for Unity and Growth: North Carolina Yearly Meeting of Friends is a faithful, passionate, growing community of Christ-followers, drawn together by God's love and truth as continually revealed through the saving grace and the Light of Jesus Christ and the Holy Scripture. As Quakers, we seek God's leading, serve God's purpose, and go as God's people into the world to love, reconcile, and transform through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Hopefully this will go up on the NCYM website soon.

Friends United Meeting has had this on their website for several years: Our purpose is "to energize and equip Friends through the power of the Holy Spirit to gather people into fellowships where Jesus Christ is known, loved and obeyed as Teacher and Lord." I realize that FUM is just one group of the Religious Society of Friends around the world, but it's one of the largest, if not the largest.

If you want to know more, wikipedia gives a surprisingly good, generalized, account of modern Quakers and their various beliefs and practices (although I did notice an error in the "sacraments" paragraph).

And there are some good discussions going on at the quaker quaker blog (disclaimer: This is a really diverse group and I have not read the overwhelming number of posts), where Quakers of various beliefs and disciplines are talking to each other and people with similar beliefs are supporting each other through various forums. In the "beliefs" forum, Javaughn Fernanders, a "liberal Quaker," had the same "ouch" reaction that I did upon reading a website that proclaimed many liberal congregations as no longer Christian. A lot of people commented on Javaughn's post.

WFMAD Challenge - Timing

2010-08-31T22:19:00.001-04:00

I took Laurie Halse Anderson up on her challenge to Write 15 Minutes A Day in August. It turned out to be the worst time in the world to take on a writing challenge - but then again, maybe it was perfect timing.

I had been struggling with my characters in the last third of my multigenerational historical novel. I couldn't even picture them, and there are great big unknown years in their fact-based stories. On top of that, my shoulder had been aching, worse and worse. In mid-August I could hardly lift my arm, and got the diagnosis: torn rotator cuff, bursitis, and maybe a pinched nerve to top it all off. I am banging this post out with one hand. Since I have to do that at my dayjob as well, writing at home while trying to heal has really lowered in priority.

The good thing, though, is the "just 15 minutes" part. It's freed me up to put my novel aside and get my notebook out (easier with one hand). Some days I just journaled, about my struggles, my characters, whatever. Other days I tried out Laurie's prompts; she always had something to try on her blog. Plus, I've been reading and reading. To paraphrase Ann Lamont (I'm reading "Bird by Bird"), writer's block is simply when you're empty and need to fill up. So I'm taking a little novel sabbatical and trying to fill my creative gas tank.

I don't think I'll keep doing the 15 minutes for the next few weeks, since it's really been a struggle, but I do plan to keep reading and to have my journal ready for when I have some thoughts in my head. I plan to get back to my novel, which I've been working on all year up 'til now, by October. And then I'll take another break from it for November's nanowrimo - National Novel Writing Month! - to write a memoir.

By the way, I met the challenge! I think I wrote all but three days in August.

Old Books in my Backyard

2010-08-27T19:56:00.006-04:00

I finally asked directions to a used book store that I'd been hearing about in Greensboro. It wasn't hard to get to, and even had a place to park although it's near UNC-G. I hadn't been feeling well the past couple of weeks, with an injured shoulder, and I knew something was still wrong with me because I didn't get excited when I first walked in and saw all those old books. Pages Past really is an old and rare book store - you won't find any sci-fi or bestsellers here.

But when I got to the second alcove and saw books about local history and genealogy - Ahhh, I was at least interested. I stayed in that alcove for I don't know how long, going through the books methodically to see what I could find. I started a "buy" pile with one that containied sketches of old area churches, including the Springfield Meetinghouse. I had to go sit in a chair to consider some of the other histories; it's hard to juggle books with one good arm. I chose a couple of paperback educational books with lots of photos from the N.C. Archives about colonial and early American life. I looked at all the ones I could reach and saw that it was closing time.

I decided to make a quick sweep through the rest of the store. I added a history of Dublin and an old, but cheap guide on U.K. and Irish genealogy.

I rounded a corner and stepped back in surprise, because I had thought I was the lone customer right then. I looked again, straight into the gaze of the bookshop cat. I held out a hand in introduction, which she politely sniffed. She let me pet her a little, then she jumped down and preceded me to the counter.

I laid my books on the counter and commented to the proprieter, "You've got a real book cat!"

"Yes, made of real books," he quipped. With her many-colored coat, that could almost be true. The cat jumped onto his shoulders and peered down to oversee the bill. "With real claws," he added.

You can see a picture of her on the Pages Past website (note that the sale on the website has last year's dates).

The one that got away (but I still have my eye on it): I found a book called the North Carolina Year Book, which was a business directory, by county, of every business owner, politician and postmaster in the state in the year 1902. It was very tempting, but the price was a bit steep. I came home and couldn't find any for sale online, but the book contents have been digitized. I wonder if this was put out every year, and if there are any others out there.

They also had a copy of the Randolph Book, which I already have, but it was signed to the author by various people and had the steep price of $100. 'Makes me appreciate my copy even more.

WFMAD challenge

2010-08-15T22:32:00.001-04:00

I took Laurie Halse Anderson up on her Write 15 Minutes A Day challenge for August. I almost missed Day 1; I was tired and it was late, but I remembered to write just as I was going to bed. I just wrote in my journal for the first time in ages.
Day 2, I felt like I should be writing in my novel, but I’m still researching scenes (fact-based historical novel) and don’t know what they look like yet. So I used Laurie's prompt and wrote about the things that were conspiring to keep me from writing today. Two days – did it!
Aug.3: I was still too overwhelmed to add scenes to my novel, so I spent more than 15 min. writing character descriptions, much needed.
Day 4 already? I wrote way after the timer went off, and started a fiction story about social networking and murder. Bwwah ha ha! The details were flowing.
Day 5, Thursday, I worked on the synopsis (outline) for my novel revision, writing where to add scenes.
Day 6, I had an awful headache, so I went to bed without WFMAD. I don't think I even wrote 15 minutes straight at my dayjob, except maybe at the end when I wrote a cutline for a cute photo (I write at work, but I'm not counting that).
I made up for that on day 7, Saturday. It took nearly 2 hours, but I wrote a whole scene to add to my novel-in-progress, from a 6-year-old’s pov. I read Laurie's prompt afterwards: makes me think of "close-ups" - details I need to add: his little hand holding his mom’s, her hand rubbing her big tummy.
One week down!

Aug. 8: writing prompt, listed 25 books I want to write. And I actually want to write at least nine of them.
Aug. 9: I wrote a tribute to a genealogy friend on my blog.
Aug. 10: Making lists works for me when I can't think of something creative. Wrote lists about a history experiment.
Aug. 11: Didn't make it on Wednesday, got home at 10 p.m.
Aug. 12, Thursday: Worked on my synopsis at morning writers' group.
Aug. 13: Blogged about a genealogical brick wall.
Day 14, Saturday: I tried to work on my novel, but I'm in that last third of this multigenerational saga, and I just don't know enough about these characters or what happens in their lives. Finally, after dilly-dallying about an hour, I journaled about my problems writing this portion.

Two weeks down, halfway point, Yeah!! (Today's writing is this blog post) I've written every day except two: one that involved a bad headache, and the other that I didn't get home 'til 10 p.m. (family time).

So, what has WFMAD done? I don't have (more of) a routine, because my work hours are different every day. I haven't worked more on my novel, because I'm stuck in this third section where I don't know what happens. But, WFMAD has forced me back into my journal, posting on my blog, and just generally given me an excuse to write other things to help get the words going.

My brick wall had concrete blocks behind it...

2010-08-13T20:58:00.002-04:00

In previous posts, I mentioned that I'm the fourth generation looking for my great-great-grandfather Thomas S. MANESS, who disappeared about 1875, age 25-26. Over the past few years, we had begun to believe he might be Thomas Swain Maness of Moore County, N.C., a rather rough character who was reputed to have five wives in different places.

Their parents' names were different, but we thought that a man with that reputation might lie about who his parents were. I haven't found Thomas' reputed parents in any census (N.C. or Arkansas). Same county, same middle initial. Their ages were about a decade different, but that wasn't too serious as Swain's date of birth changed wildly on his various records; no one's pinned it down exactly.

My uncle sent off his DNA to compare with a relative of Swain's. We got the results this week. And the DNA verdict is ... (drum roll) ... we are NOT related! As a matter of fact, we don't seem to be related to any Maness on file; they started a new family group for us. Which leads me to wonder, if a man could lie about his parents, would he give his own real name?

My great-grandfather had seven (six adult) children, so we have a whole clan of Manesses in Randolph County. What if his father wasn't even a Maness at all?

Here I was, the official family genealogist, trying not to assume until proven, warning my relatives to stop passing down oral history about the other family. I didn't realize until I got the DNA results how much I had built up my own hopes about solving this mystery. I was floored.

Other folks, however, have been encouraging. My uncle wants to see another Maness genealogist we haven't talked to yet. We have an old photograph that we're trying to compare. A helpful genealogist in Moore County reminded me that the connection between Swain and the living relative (for DNA) was based on oral history, so we could still be kin to Swain and not the relative. And no, I haven't forgotten the possibility that Thomas could have been telling the truth, and I need to look harder for his alleged parents.

Last month I heard a story that Swain could chop wood like no other man. And then my cousin, not knowing about that, mentioned that our Thomas was a woodsman - a piece of oral history that I had never heard. We have more clues and resources than my family has ever had. I could be back to square one, or this trail could be warmer than ever.

A genealogical role model

2010-08-09T09:07:00.003-04:00

Rest In Peace, Thurman MANESS, 27 July 1909 - 8 Aug. 2010. Kind, smart man and keeper of oral history and genealogy.

I got word Sunday that Mr. Thurman passed away, age 101. I am so glad that we went to visit him in Moore County a couple of weeks ago. Although bed-bound, he was alert and cheerful. As soon as he recognized me, the stories starting pouring forth!

Blind for the past three decades, Mr. Thurman told his many stories to a genealogy friend and had them published in a book (now out of print). He had contributed to cemetery books and a huge MANESS family book that I've seen in the library in Carthage. He gave his research to that friend (they knew each other from the historical society) while he was still alive. He had his DNA tested, on record with a rich family tree that goes back to Scotland, and we are still awaiting results to find out if we are cousins.

As a genealogist, he did everything right. I'd like to leave a legacy like that.

The Meanest Man in Moore County — and the Nicest

2010-07-27T20:44:00.004-04:00

My uncle and I went visiting, Saturday. Sort of a genealogical mission, except that we had contacted these people before to get information and we just wanted to talk to them face to face. We're in search of a brick wall ancestor, and he's so "brick wall" that even our family members that lived back then didn't know where he was — he disappeared.

Thomas S. MANESS, 25, married my great-great-grandmother, Sarah Pandora WALL, when she was 14, almost 15, years old, in 1874. Before their son was born in 1875, Thomas left to go look for work in Virginia, and Pandora never heard from him again. Her son, my great-grandfather, carried around a tintype picture of Thomas and searched for his father, but never found out anything.

Fast-forward to the present. I'm the fourth generation looking for Thomas, and I feel like we're finally hot on his trail. We suspect he may be Thomas McSwain "Swain" Maness, who lived in Moore County and died in 1903. Last weekend, Lacy Garner in Carthage called Swain the meanest man in Moore County. He carried a gun and even the sheriff was scared of him. Local folks said he had five wives, one of them as far away as Randolph County (where my family lived).

Lacy said he was glad to meet us. He had written down stories about Swain in a book, Stories of Upper Moore County. He got the stories from one of the nicest men in Moore County, Thurman Maness, whom we also went to visit. Thurman turned 101 today, July 27 — Happy Birthday! He is a treasure trove of oral history, a longtime genealogist and, on top of that, his grandfather was Swain's first cousin.

Swain's last wife was Sarah BRADY, death date unknown but probably before 1903. They had daughters, two of whom lived near Raleigh in the 1970s or 1980s. My next step is to try to find them, or their children, to see if we can compare pictures. I'm not posting Thomas' picture because we're not sure which one it is — the tintype was unlabeled, but we've narrowed it down to a few photos.

My uncle has also sent off his DNA to be tested against Thurman's. The results won't necessarily tell us if Swain is our ancestor, but it should tell us if we're in the same branch of the Maness family.

From gunshop to pharmacy to retirement home, we met people and had a great time talking about the Maness family. If our two branches turn out to be from the same tree, we will solve an old, old mystery.

Benjamin and Ann

2010-07-26T08:38:00.003-04:00

(Spoiler Alert! for my novel in progress)

I feel sorry for Benjamin Parvin and Ann English, who had a long and rocky courtship.

In my historical novel-in-progress, the courtship was especially long because of a big argument and an estrangement that went on for several years. I made all of that up, to add conflict and make for an interesting plot. But something happened in real life, and I have no idea what it was.

Quaker engagements had to be long, because the couple went through an approval process that involved their local, "monthly" meeting and the regional, or "province" meeting that only met every three months. No matter what their age, they had to have permission from parents (or relations, if the parents weren't living) and everybody in their meeting (church congregation). Benjamin and Ann were in their late twenties, which was fairly common for 17th-century marriages in that community.

Benjamin, who had grown up as a second-generation Quaker in Ireland, did something wrong in those procedures and the meeting gave him a "paper of Condemnation," which means he was on the verge of being disowned for whatever it was he did. They said he had "proceeded in relation to marriage with Ann English Contrary to the order of truth" — the word "truth" being used at that time for both belief in Christ and for all of the Quaker rules and culture.

No, I don't think they were pregnant. The meeting had no qualms about writing that in their records, and Ann's first child was born in 1698. Since Ann was an orphan and Benjamin's father had died, I suspect they broke some rule about getting permission, or perhaps they set a date or started making plans before they had the meeting's approval.

In the 12th month 1696 (February 1697), Benjamin wrote an apology, which was accepted, and he and Ann started making the required rounds of meetings to get their approval to marry. They presented themselves to the men's meeting, then the women's meeting, that month, then went to the province meeting in 1st month (March), back to the monthly meeting in Moate in 2nd month (April), which sent a certificate to the next province meeting. They finally married in 3rd month (May) 1697.

It took a lot of persistence for a couple to get married back then, but Ann and Benjamin had it.

Village Fair

2010-07-21T20:30:00.000-04:00

Saturday I went to the eighth annual Village Fair at Mendenhall Plantation in Jamestown, N.C. The early 19th-century house and barn belonged to Richard Mendenhall, a Quaker. It is now a museum about that family's everyday life and the "Other South" - people who kept up plantations and homes by themselves because they did not believe in slavery.

The Village Fair featured crafts - kids making Quaker bonnets, a lady spinning wool, a metal detecting club showing the artifacts they've found, vendors and musicians.

Left, The Good News Boys. Below, Triad Scottish Fiddlers and Friends.

They had a blacksmith working at his trade, and a few people in costume.

I didn't get to see it this year, but across the street at the old meetinghouse they re-enacted a traditional Quaker wedding.

The false-bottom wagon, now at Mendenhall, was used to transport runaway slaves on the underground railroad. Read more about the wagon here. They rolled it under this tent just before a big rainstorm.

Tombstone Tuesday - Camden, S.C.

2010-07-06T06:05:00.001-04:00

As I finished going through the cemetery files (see previous posts), I did hit paydirt. One of the files contains a spiral-bound notebook where Ted had written down the names in a cemetery (original work), then gone back and annotated where he found full dates or family members' names. Another file had similar work, scribbled onto the backs of re-used paper.

While my goal was to see if we could publish any of Ted's work, I was excited about some of his copied material because it pertains to cemeteries where my Quaker ancestors lived - Bush River and Camden (Fredericksburgh), S.C.

I've never been to Bush River. A descendant in Georgia, with Ted's help, organized a group of people that has done a lot of work to clean up the cemetery. The Haworth family has a couple of photos on their website. I'd like to go there someday, in the next two years.

The Old Quaker Cemetery at Camden, which has grown as it is still in use by the current town, started as a small burying ground used by the Fredericksburgh Monthly Meeting (the old name of Camden, also called Wateree and Pine Tree Hill). Here are some photos I took during a visit in 2007. The brick-covered graves, with no inscription, are purported to be old Quaker graves. Which means that one of them could possibly belong to my ancestor, Joshua English, who immigrated from Ireland in 1753. I don't know. I just know that the 18th-century Quakers didn't believe in marking their names onto headstones.

Cemetery files

2010-07-04T09:08:00.001-04:00

I spent most of Saturday - from lunch to 10pm - going through Ted's cemetery files. And I'm not done, yet. I didn't think it would take so long, but then, I find myself looking at every sheet of paper instead of skimming.

The files were donated to the cemetery committee in keeping with his wishes. Word of mouth has it that he visited every Quaker cemetery in N.C. and some in neighboring states, and wrote down many of the names on the tombstones. My job, for which I enthusiastically volunteered, is to answer the question, can we publish his work?

So far, the answer is not looking good. The information in the files is wonderful, but most of it is copies from already published sources - not original material. Think of your own genealogy files: copies from books, a few printouts of deeds from microfilm, a few scribbled notes on scraps of paper, letters from other genealogy enthusiasts. What's all that going to mean when you're gone? When I'm gone?

Oh, it's all definitely worth keeping! He did a lot of legwork, and some of the books that he copied from may be hard to find. But as far as publishable work... I wonder if he had more, that he kept somewhere else?