Mending

Her hair was grey with red streaks, pulled back into a short messy ponytail, the shorter front hair framing her face and flopping forward occasionally.  She was bending over boxes, piling things on the too-narrow conference room table, digging into satchels, and generally presenting a frazzled, disorganized front.  But her smile was puckish, and I liked her scattered style.  I was there for free because I volunteer for NMLA, so I stepped in to help pass out materials, photocopy handouts, and generally make myself useful.  This meant I missed some of the introductory material, but it was mainly stuff I already knew:  her name and credentials, the way a book is put together, the terminology.  I have been working in libraries since 1981, and along the way you pick up some things.  Text block, check; gutter, check; leaf, check.  However, there were a lot of terms that I found very bizarre.  I would never think to call paste and tape adhesives, for example, and she had a tendency to refer to the complete book as an artifact (as in: "this artifact is poorly constructed.")  Terms like "fail" and "loss," fluttered from her like so many moths (which could be the source of the said "fail.")

To me a loss is not a hole in a page (er, "leaf"). 

But, there is a certain pleasure in the technical vocabulary.  I want to talk like that.  It's almost poetic:  find your adhesives, your cutting tools, your internally plasticized protective pouches.  Conserve those artifacts.  Hinge in those pages or tip them in, using the brush that has just the right amount of adhesive.  You swirl the brush in the glue, (er, adhesive), and you lightly strike against the edge of the page, (er, leaf), leaving beads of adhesive all down the edge.  Bop, bop, bop, I write in my notes, watching her demo this process.  It's a miniscule amount of glue, but after break she picks up the book and dangles it by the tipped-in page.  I am gobsmacked.

Each job is both unique and the same.  You look at your book and you decide:  is it worth the time and precision of the task to repair it?  CAN it be repaired?  What should I do first?  We learn that ten is the magic number for tipping in:  any more and you risk a total fail.  A TOTAL FAIL!  Complete and utter failure! You step the pages, 3 or 4 at a time, a millimeter of edge showing for each leaf, and you cover that edge in a thin layer of adhesive.  After that, you line the leaves up and pinch them together, sheathing them in wax paper and weighting them down.  In twenty minutes, you pick up the set of leaves and prepare to tip them in:  bop, bop, bop with the adhesive-filled brush, leaving a thin line of glue beads.

Before you tip in a leaf, you need to prepare its edge.  It should be a little "toothy" (aka, feathered), so you don't use the scalpel or scissors for your cutting tool.  You figure out how much paper you need to remove, because the tipped in page will stick out if you don't trim at the gutter but you don't want to trim too much.  You set a straight edge at the edge of the table.  You line the leaf along the straight edge, with the millimeter of excess hanging over the straight edge.  You pick up your abrasive (aka, sand paper file) and, in a brisk sweeping motion down and across the straight edge, you file off the edge of the leaf.  It's magic.

As I played with my new dangerous poetic tools, I thought about what I was doing.  I was mending, I was evaluating, I was repairing.  I was not curing anything though.  The goal was to be good enough, to give a little more life to the damaged artifact, let it circulate a little more.  In the end, there would be more failures, which I would be unable to repair.  And the book would be weeded, its life at an end.

So, it's a stop-gap, as so many activities are.  You decide it's worth doing, and you do it to the best of your ability, with the best of your focus.  Our conservator/teacher says she repairs the library books that she checks out, and she wonders if anyone notices.  But, that's not really the point.  She sees suffering, and she heals where she can.  It's a choice, and in the end, the choosing and the doing are what are important.

After 30 years
Of working with abused books,
I've learned how to heal.

Book Fiasco!

So, I'm sitting in an echoing windowless concrete-floored hall:  a parking garage without cars, practically.  Booths are lined up, separated by long alternating blue and white curtains hung from metal standards.  This is Day Three of the First Annual SouthWest Book Fiesta, and I am alone at our booth because this Fiesta ain't happenin'.  Of the 17 visitors to our Library booth, 12 have been fellow exhibitors.  I spend a half hour looking at nearby booths, and will go out again later in the day.  The booths run the gamut:  city departments predominate, because the city is offering the Convention Center for free.  Authors and small presses are relegated to the wall areas, and  large booksellers like Page One are in the center near the entrance.  I stopped by the UNM Press booth and am lusting after the local cookbooks and the $60 book of old New Mexico maps.  With the 30% discount, I just may get a few books.

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The lovely young couple at Typod Mary chat with me while the female half decorates my exhibitor's badge.  She is getting ready for Comic-Con and apparently needs to have practice simultaneously drawing and chatting.  According to Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, you need to disengage your analytic brain when you draw, so I can see how that would be a problem. Unless you are babbling, conversation usually requires some left brain activity.

Of course, it's not a problem for me, I have brought babbling to an art form.  On the other hand, I can't draw.  So sad when two skills can't mesh.

They are so very Portland that I feel homesick all over again.  Both are sporting long brown hair, intellectually-framed glasses and casually funky clothing.  He has scary zombie-apocalypse zine-type comics that L would probably happily snap up for the Library's zine collection.  They are the first zines I've seen since I left MCL....I thought zines were so last decade.

I would love to transport them to a place where they would be appreciated.  They are an anomaly at this event:  too edgy, too young.  For the most part, the individual authors are in their 70s, trying to sell their memoirs or religious enlightenment.  Or both.

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Just finished talking with a gent who is hawking his mystery novel.  I asked for a description and he said, "Iron Chef meets the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."  He's a short fireplug of a man, with close-shaved white hair, wearing polo shirt and chinos.  Fixing me with a glittering eye, his voice booming over the dull rumbling echoes of 169 vendors talking to each other, he gives me plot summary, peppered with personal craziness.

Well, it is a mystery about cooking.

He is followed by a tall white-haired man wearing a bolo tie, jeans and cowboy boots, and a broad smile.  K has sent him over to get the acquisitions contact info.  (I tell her later that she owes me.  Big Time.  She is suitably contrite.)

His book is set in Australia.  The protagonists are on their 40th anniversary trip (he coyly shares a sex scene that is apparently autobiographical) and their laptop gets traded with that of a terrorist.  They are being chased all over Oz by hit men with various quirks:  acrophobia and cynophobia and love of kids (the Islam assassin is hoping there are no kids around when he finishes up his job and blows up the evidence.)

I am nodding like a bobble-head and my cheeks are sore with smiling.  While I have years of experience talking with the socially inept, there is a special poignancy when they are trying to sell a part of themselves.

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I walk the hall again.  This is a very sad event.  So much potential, wasted.  The 169 vendors are paying $236 for a half booth, carting tons of books and swag, and there is literally no foot traffic.  I say, well this is the first one, next year they will surely work out the bugs.  They say, there won't be a next time unless they reduce the expenses for the vendors and make it a free event for the public.  Tax write-offs only go so far:  there is lost revenue and overhead in addition to the cost of the booth.

Even though I wear my exhibitor's badge prominently, along with a bright red ABC apron, I get lots of pitches.  Some want to sell to me, some to the library.  But one charming woman discusses archaeology and pottery with me and she asks me why I'm in NM.  As per usual, I talk about jobs and green chili stew and reminisce about early visits to NM.  I mention my divorce and the joy of rediscovering my old passions.  We have a very similar personal trajectory, and I discover she spent 10 years working at Crow Canyon, about 5 years after my working vacation there.  Apparently they've built a hogan for visitors:  in my day we stayed in the main lodge and the staff lived in trailers.

At the end of our talk, she hands me the promo copy of a book on 21st century pueblo pottery:  "You've looked at that several times, I'd like you to have it."  My throat tightens momentarily... people are so kind.

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Lunch time.  There's a huge stand at the entrance selling wine and beer, but I can't do that on company time.  They steer me towards the concession area, and a very sweet young man (at most 20) promises me that the Navajo taco is made with fresh ingredients and is very yummy.  He has melting brown eyes and curly brown-black hair and a sincerely engaging smile.  I believe him, and spend $11 on the taco and some coffee.

The sauce is cold and the frybread is cardboard.  But he stops by the booth:  how was it?  I smile and say, "fine."  Can't bring myself to say EXCELLENT DUDE!  But telling him the truth?  Not possible.  It would be like kicking a puppy dog.

At 3:30 he comes back, sans apron and white chef's hat.  I am dithery when he leaves:  "He is SO CUTE!" I gush.  K concurs, but is more interested in texting her husband.  We have run out of library gossip by this point.  I am alternating knitting with blogging.

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It's 4 pm, and 95% of the vendors bailed 2 hours ago.  The poetry slam is still going on:  they are performing for each other, and doing so with passion.  Some of it is good, some of it....not so much.  K says, this is ridiculous.  She texts with her friend and husband and they make movie date arrangements.   We pack up the two crates of brochures, SRP prizes, flyers, bookmarks, and plastic insects.  The book vendors have a tougher job:  we're good to go in 5 minutes. K's husband picks us up at the curb, and they circle around trying to find the parking garage entrance to drop me off (a problem I had at 9 am:  you'd think the convention center would want to make the parking obvious, draw people in, make it easy for people to get there.  But no.)

When we arrive at the end of the ramp, we find that all entrances have been blocked by gate, bar, and chain-link fences.  I get out and walk to my car, leaving them to back down the ramp.  Somehow, it seems a fitting end to the day.