My First Bookstore

My first bookstore was “The Frigate” (There is no frigate like a book…” It was housed in a Colonial building at the end of our street. It had a bright red door and the sign that hung outside bore a picture of a sailing ship and the lettering was very ornate and old-fashioned.

The door was open from nine to five on weekdays and ten to six on Saturdays. Closed on Sundays. The proprietor’s name was Polly.

When we first moved to this neighborhood I was too young to cross the big street alone. It was a major thoroughfare with trolleys and trucks. I would have to wait for my mother to take me. But on my tenth birthday, she decided I was old enough to go by myself. Clutching my hard-saved allowance and birthday money in my hand, ($2) I set off.

Since I arrived on the dot of nine, there was no one else in the store. Just me. It was as quiet as the library except for the soft tap tapping of a typewriter in a back room. I hesitated for a minute, then took the plunge and began browsing among the shelves, inhaling the heady aroma of new paper and fresh ink, the smell of newly printed books. I don’t know how long I prowled there, but after awhile the little bell over the door rang and another customer came in. At this point, Polly emerged from the backroom, and seeing me first, said, “Can I help you?”

“No,” was my resolute response. I didn’t want any help. This book was to be my choice and mine alone.

She smiled and moved on to the other customer. A tall woman who looked like a schoolteacher, she gave me a disapproving glance, probably wondering why such a young person was in a bookshop alone. I clutched my money tighter and continued to study the brightly colored spines of the books.

Unfortunately, I don’t remember what book I finally picked, but knowing my taste at that time, it was probably the latest Nancy Drew mystery.

Robin Hathaway

Where Did You Come From, My Friend?

I have a friend who sometimes looks in the mirror and wonders… where did you really come from?

We are a nation of immigrants from every corner of the earth. Every race, color, religion, ethnicity, philosophy.
- We are human beings.
- We depend on one another.
- We speak one language… Humanglish.

As Americans, we want the same things:
- The American dream
- Freedom, liberty, justice for all

My friend belongs to a wonderful adult group in the center of America's largest urban cosmopolis, a group with superb programs on every possible topic – from art to literature, history, music, every domain of thought and culture from all corners of the globe.

Members come from many geographic areas, Russia, Israel, Hungary, Poland. The background of most of the 700 members stems from the laws, traditions and culture of the Old Testament.

My friend's heritage, as far as she knows, comes from both the Old and the New Testaments. Currently, she has the coloring and physical characteristics of Northern Europe.

Sometimes fellow members of this group ask her, "Where are you from?"

She replies, "Here."

Then they ask, "Where are your parents from?"

She repeats. "Here."

Silence.

Longer silence, accompanied by a puzzled look.

Then, with a broad smile, "But where are your GRANDparents from?"

Now, slightly embarrassed, my friend says quickly, "They also came from here. Everyone in my family has been in America for a long, long time. I think they came originally from England or France. I'm not sure. It was so long ago. It's never been a question…"

The questioners shake their heads, perplexed and walk away, leaving my friend to ponder.

What should she have replied???

She could have said, on my father's side there was a signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Hampshire. On my mother's side there were a few Methodist ministers…

But given the way history happened, there were probably some other pieces of the geneological puzzle. But she had no proof – there was nothing in writing. And all she could do was piece together bits of history that MAY have happened.

She recalled her history lessons from grade school…

Maybe this: A couple of hundred years ago my paternal relatives sailed in a flimsy boat across the Atlantic. Some of them died on the way. Some were killed when they landed, by wild animals or the harsh New England winters or the Native American tribes already here on the land.

Some might have married those same natives.

On my maternal side, they came across that same ocean, but landed further south, maybe Virginia or the Carolinas or Georgia's penal colony. Everyone knew the southern lands were colonized by escaped convicts from Europe.

Some might have co-habited with people with dark skins, some of them with African-born slaves.

So, if she could trace the lineage honestly, she'd have to answer her colleagues' questions by admitting she might come from slaves, convicts, slave-owners, from that side of the family!

When my friend was in college and worked at the Henry Street Settlement House Camp up in Westchester county one summer, the people there assumed she was also Jewish. She had dark hair then. And a tan.

My friend looked in her mirror recently and thought: What does it really matter where your or my relatives came from???

We are here.

This is our home… on the little struggling planet called Earth.

America the beautiful… my country 'tis of thee… God bless America…

Thelma Straw

P.S. My friend is that face that stares back at me in the mirror…

P.P.S. Please share with me your thoughts on this topic…

Preparing for Fall

The temperature in Lambertville plunged thirty degrees last week, leading us all to think about getting ready for cooler weather. As soon as I finish the book I'm working on I mean to get busy and pull my fall wardrobe together. When I finish the book my agent will get me a million-dollar advance for it, right? Or, far more likely, I'll win the Pennsylvania Lottery, which is up to umpty-septillion dollars this week. As a millionaire, I'll be able to select a few of the little dresses on Neiman-Marcus's web site, all in lovely, subtle shades of green.

Neiman-Marcus's Fall Offerings

This is what comes of having no daughters. There's nobody to say, "Seriously, Mom? Really? You're going to wear that out in public?" (Sons don't care what you wear, as long as it's not totally slutty.) But, alas, I haven't anyplace to wear these clothes, even if I were thirty years younger and twenty pounds lighter. As long as I'm dreaming, though, I can dream of wearing a long, green, ten-thousand-dollar dress to an awards dinner, where my book will get a prize, right? Right? What do you think, should I buy the dress now or wait until I finish the book?

Me, Photoshopped into Dress

I am so ready for fall.

Kate Gallison

My Life in Six T-Shirts

There used to be shop on Third Street in Greenwich Village where you could buy a cotton t-shirt and have the store clerks write anything you wanted on it.  I bought several during those years when making a statement that way was considered cool, even in the Village, the World Headquarters of Cool.  With the sale of our country house, a few of those shirts that I hadn't seen in years emerged from my unjustly extensive collection of memorabilia.  Somehow, the six shirts shown here wound up in one pile on my closet shelf.  They tell my story, not the whole tale of my life, but some of the significant bits.  The first two were on sale, as is, from the store.  The others show personal messages.  Here is what they say about me:

I went to Catholic school for 17 years, all of my formal schooling.  That experience was largely a blessing for a poor, working class girl like me.  The quality of my education was for the most part excellent, if rule bound.  On that score, a passage in The Once and Future King really spoke to me.  In that book, to teach the young Arthur about life and leadership, Merlin turns him into various animals.  When the future king is transformed into an ant and approaching the ant colony for the first time, over the entrance he reads, "Everything that is not compulsory is forbidden."  I could relate to that!  On the other hand, I went to a women's college on scholarship.  There I met brilliant nuns dedicated to educating the minds of women. I revere them.  They gave me my college degree as a gift.  And showed me that women could be gifted.  And take charge.

I emerged from college right into the transformative experience of the feminism of the 1960's. I have written elsewhere on this blog of my participation in what I call The Pink Collar Wars.  The nuns of my college primed my engine so that I might zoom right into the movement and have it broaden my horizons and multiply my possibilities.

When New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy in the 1970's, the real estate market wobbled for a few months, making a small house on 12th Street, badly in need of renovation, affordable for me and David.  A beloved friend whom we greatly respected for his real estate acumen and financial prowess, begged us not to buy.  "Buy near us in New Jersey," he said, pointing out New York's state and city income taxes, the city's sink-hole-of-depravity reputation, and the leafy beauty of the swanky suburban town where he lived, where we could have bought a mansion for the same price.  We agonized.  We even did a financial analysis that told us that, in the long run, it might cost us $10-20K extra per year to live in New York.  But we were in love with our city, warts and all.  We decided to buy that house on Twelfth Street.  During its chaotic renovation, while staying in New Jersey with my father, we drove in and rummaged around the dusty construction site to find clothes suitable for a friend's wedding.  When, in duds relatively filth free, we boarded a taxi to go to the church, David said, "We are more like a track team than a married couple."  The next week, when our daughter was still commuting through the Lincoln Tunnel to the 4th grade, I moseyed over the Third Street to get us team shirts.  Staying in New York was the best decision we ever made, in many ways, especially financially.

This shirt has more to do with my daughter's education than mine.  Brilliant as she is, she qualified for the ultra-prestigious Hunter College High School, a public institution where the 200 most brilliant New York kids, by a rigorous testing process, attended.  Because of the heady milieu where she had been studying, by the time she was ready to apply to college, she considered herself average or a little below.  She fretted that she would never get into a decent institution of higher education.  No amount of reassurance on my part calmed her fears.  "You're just saying that because you are my mother," she said.  I went to Third Street to get shirts that spoke about where her parents attended college.  I chose sayings to communicate that one did not have to go to Harvard to have a good life.  Her parents both started out just this side of destitute, and we both had jobs we loved that we're quite financially rewarding.  We were, after all, living in our own Greenwich Village townhouse.  Mine is the shirt you see here.  David's said, "Unimpressive State University."   Even having parents wearing such billboards did not calm her down much.  She got into the top four small liberal arts colleges in the country.  She went to Swarthmore!

I wore this shirt to Luciano Pavarotti's first free concert in Central Park.  I learned to love the opera, literally, at my grandfather’s knee. Music of all sorts of, including opera, brings me enhancement of my joys, solace in sorrow, companionship when I am lonely, help concentrating on any task at hand, and especially inspiration when I am writing.  I consider making music the highest calling for humans on this planet.  I can’t play a lick myself, but I am so very lucky to have been born into a family of people who can experience ecstasy when listening to music

.

Most New Yorkers used to call that Pharaoh of old two-TANK-ah-men.  But when the first big exhibition of artifacts from King Tut’s famous tomb came to The Metropolitan Museum, Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s president, made sure we all learned how to pronounce the ancient name properly, with the accent on Tut (long o sound).  I got this shirt to wear to the show.  But I also keep it as another talisman of how lucky a person I am.  The photos of ancient Egyptian artifacts in my fourth grade text book were the first taste I got of the breath of history and the existence of exotic locales where one can see the art of the centuries. I have lived to see Karnak and Abu Simbel and to celebrate my 60th birthday at the Great Pyramids of Giza under a full moon. Not bad for a little girl from Our Lady of Lourdes School in Paterson, NJ.

I am keeping the shirts.  I don't ever want to forget any of this.

Annamaria Alfieri

Summer Reading List

Here are a few books I’ve enjoyed this summer that I’d like to share with you.

THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett.
The perfect book to read during the year of the Diamond Jubilee!

MRS. PALFREY AT THE CLAREMONT by Elizabeth Taylor.

I had read Elizabeth Taylor’s short stories in the New Yorker and liked them, but I had never read any of her novels. This one is charming. The author understands what growing old is all about and portrays the process in many shades of gray with great sympathy. I want to read more by this author

ANY MRS. MALORY MYSTERIES by Hazel Holt.

This writer got me through the heat wave. She is like a cool bath or a glass of cold lemonade, not too sweet. Tart.

MARY OLIVER/POETRY.

I’m not big on modern poetry, mainly because I usually don’t understand it. But this poet is very understandable, and her poems are like a cold drink of water,

That’s it! If you have any books you' d like to share, I'd love to hear about them.

Robin Hathaway