Mockingbird Hill Cottage — Page 467 — Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Day One Hundred Forty-One

August 1, 2020 at 9:30 am by Claudia

Beautiful morning out there, and so far, not too humid. Don and I had yet another stimulating conversation on the porch glider while sipping our second cup of coffee. I want to take advantage of these coolish mornings on the porch while I can. Now he’s off to recycle.

Yesterday, I received an email from The Mysterious Bookshop, one of my all-time favorite bookshops, which is located in Manhattan. This is a world-famous bookshop, packed to the very high ceilings with mysteries as well as a splendid Sherlock Holmes collection. I’ve written about it before on this blog, devoting more than one post to its riches.

I’m on their mailing list and yesterday’s weekly email pulled me up short. I’m going to quote from part of the message from Otto Penzler, the owner. After wishing everyone well, he says:

…a grateful shout-out to our many customers who were so supportive while we were forced to close our doors. The kindness and generosity shown by long-time friends of the store, as well as by newer ones, has warmed my heart.

We are not out of the woods. A large percentage of New York’s population remains nervous about taking public transportation so we are seeing virtually no foot traffic. We have been a tourist destination for many years but there are no tourists. We have a sign on the door that limits the number of customers to six at a time, which is hilarious as we don’t have six browsers a day, much less at one time.

A recent report indicates that 76,000 of approximately 350,000 small businesses in New York will never reopen because of COVID-19. We are the last mystery bookstore in New York (there once were six) and are determined to be here for a long time.

We know you have many choices when it comes to where you purchase your books. But while many superstores do not depend on book sales, we do. That is why we are asking you to remember us for your book purchasing needs. If you cannot come to our store, we are happy to help you over the phone, email, or through our Mysterious Bookshop website. We are grateful to be the store you turn to when looking for that perfect mystery or unique gift and hope to continue that tradition for years to come.

I was alarmed. The bookshop is located in Tribeca and most people would have to take public transport to get there. It isn’t in Midtown. It isn’t on the Upper West Side. It’s way down in Tribeca. Unless you live nearby, you have to take the subway. Or a cab. Or an Uber, etc. All of which involve contact with other people, which leaves most people understandably wary.

They don’t even get 6 browsers a day. That’s what really shook me.

I love this bookshop. So I decided to order two books from them, right away. I’ve been wanting to order Michael Connelly’s newest and of course I want Louise Penny’s newest, which will be published on September 1st. Now, I looked them up on Amazon. I could save close to $15.00 on the Connelly if I ordered it from them, and I’ve got free shipping because I have Amazon Prime. And I would save on the Louise Penny, as well – close to $10.00. That’s what Amazon can do and that’s why they are a threat to independent bookshops, always, but especially during this time. They can slash prices when independent bookshops cannot.

But we need to support independent bookshops. They are struggling during this pandemic. The Mysterious Bookshop has been around for years. I can’t imagine New York without it. I can’t imagine my world without it. So, despite the temptation from Amazon wafting off the screen, I called the shop and ordered both books. It’s most likely a drop in the bucket in the big picture, but I hope more people read that message and decided to do the same. If we all do that, we’ll help save our beloved bookshops. I’m as guilty as the next person, you know. I sometimes order from Amazon because I need something quickly. But I’m determined to change that behavior, to think first of ordering from an independent bookshop.

The people that work at The Mysterious Bookshop are incredibly knowledgeable. I’ve stood there perusing books while listening to conversations between the staff and customers, many of which centered around, “Could you recommend a book that…?” The replies from staff were astonishing in their breadth of knowledge and their willingness to find just the right book for that customer. Can Barnes and Noble do that? No, not by a long shot. Can Amazon do that? No. You’ll get some recommendations but they’re driven by an algorithm. They’re faceless; without nuance, without subtlety.

I’ve found the same kind of response at Oblong Books. And at Faulkner House Books in New Orleans. And at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. And, with a staff that has an extraordinary knowledge of literature, at John Sandoe Books in London.

They’ve all suffered great losses during this pandemic. Shakespeare and Company is open again, as is John Sandoe. Our bookshops here, if open, are operating with restrictions in place that often include no browsing. So we need to step up and order from them. We need to call them and have the same conversation we would have if we were there in person: “What do you recommend?”

I realize I’m preaching to the choir, but yesterday’s email from The Mysterious Bookshop shook me. Our means are very modest, but surely I can order something from them and say I’m fine with it costing full price and I’m fine with paying for shipping. They deserve it. They deserve my business.

Also, I want to recommend a documentary that just came out called The Booksellers. It’s all about the world of rare books and those who sell them and it is absolutely wonderful. You can rent it on Amazon Prime and on YouTube and probably elsewhere. I recommend it highly.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.

Day One Hundred Forty

July 31, 2020 at 9:36 am by Claudia

• Last night: thunder, lots of it, really loud. Oh good! Rain! Nope. This is the way it has been around here most of the time this summer. Radar shows storms heading our way – nothing. The rivers are shockingly low. We really need rain. The latest? Possible rain this morning.

Claudia’s forecast? Highly doubtful.

• Woke up far, far too early this morning and it isn’t pretty. But Don and I had nice chunk of time for our second cup of coffee – we sat on the porch glider and chatted and it was lovely. Now he’s playing the guitar while I write this.

• We got the results from his Lyme test. Yes, he has Lyme. And it sure looks like his numbers are high because his doctor called in a prescription for two more weeks of Doxycycline. We were as sure as we could be without an official test result that it was Lyme. As I said before, we are very familiar with it. Don’s had it before. I’ve had it before. The dogs had it more than once. Though he’s been feeling better, he has the ‘foggy brain’ that often is a part of Lyme. He’s very tired. He runs out of energy quickly.

The first round of antibiotics knocked out the acute symptoms; the fever and chills and general aches, the way in which it hit his nervous system. This round will hopefully knock out the rest of it.

• I received a sad email from Hartford Stage yesterday. Due to COVID-19 and the fact that there will be more than one round of it before we get a vaccine aided by the fact that people aren’t following social distancing and the imperative to wear a mask, they have decided to cancel the winter/spring part of next year’s season. That means no performances until next fall. A year from now. My concern has nothing to do myself – there is new management there and I don’t expect to get any more work from them. I am concerned, though, for all my friends who work there. They have been on furlough since March. Now they will be on furlough until well into next year. How will they survive? This is heartbreaking. It really hit me when my friend Samantha, who is the company manager, posted on Facebook that she is leaving. She had been studying real estate and I knew that, but her hope was to start to work part-time in real estate and keep working at Hartford Stage. Now that there’s no hope of coming back from furlough for another year, she has made the decision to leave.

These people are like family to me. I always said that Hartford Stage was my second home.

I imagine we’ll be hearing more of this from other regional theaters. It’s maddening because this cancellation of the entire 2020/2021 season didn’t have to happen. It most likely wouldn’t have happened, at least to this extent, if Covidiots had heeded the advice of medical experts, stayed home, practiced social distancing and wore a damn mask. This is on Trump and the GOP. They proudly flaunt the fact that they don’t wear a mask and then the almost inevitable headline: “so-and-so has been diagnosed with COVID-19.” I don’t wish this on anyone, Republican or Democrat. It’s awful. Herman Cain? No mask at the Tulsa Rally and proudly tweeting about it. Louis Gohmert? No mask sitting in a hearing, no mask in the hallways of Congress, no mask in his office around his staff who were made fun of if they wore one. And on and on. Was all that bravado worth it? Is it worth their lives? Is it worth the lives of everyone else they have come into contact with?

Is it worth the tanking of the economy, which means that the GOP/Trump/DeVoss now push to send kids back to school, putting everyone at great risk, because they have to get people back to work because Trump did nothing, constantly tweeted misinformation about the virus, disbanded the NSC Pandemic Unit, ignored the book that the Obama administration passed on to them about how to handle a pandemic, ignored it simply because it was from Obama and Trump has the thinnest skin of any living being? Over 150,000 dead and no end in sight.

Hearing Barack Obama speak at John Lewis’ funeral was a breath of fresh air. How I long for the days when he was President. Articulate. Compassionate. Leading us at a time of great loss. Speaking to the pain in our hearts. And forcefully and passionately compelling us to fight for our country. He is everything that Trump is not and could never hope to be.

Okay.

• I’ll close with a Happy Birthday to my mom. She would have been 93 today. I miss her so, so much, especially today. I’ve been on the edge of tears all morning; lack of sleep, the state of our country, the loss of John Lewis – and how I wish I could hug my mom, inhale the scent of Oil of Olay that always was a part of her essence, make her laugh, sit on her lap (which I did even as an adult.)

I love you Mom.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Day One Hundred Thirty-Nine

July 30, 2020 at 9:57 am by Claudia

Two things: First, some of you might have tried to get on the blog between about 3 pm and 7 pm. It was down because the server was down. Sorry for that. It’s the second time that’s happened in two weeks. It is ultimately frustrating because you can’t come here, I can’t answer comments, and there’s always a loss of ad income (which is happening to every blog and website during this period of lockdown.)

Second: Look at my boxwood! I truly thought it had come down with box blight. There were dead leaves everywhere and they looked exactly like the photos of boxwood after box blight. My original suspicion was that the dead growth was due to the late freeze we had in May. But then I started to worry about blight. I cut out most of the dead growth, pruned the bushes, and was sure we’d have to remove them at some point – because that’s what you have to do with blight. And now, after a month or so, there’s new growth everywhere and they’re looking healthy again. Hurrah!

The four boxwoods were the very first thing we planted here. We moved in at the end of August and there was nothing we could do about planting anything in the big bed or anywhere else on the property until the next spring. But I managed to dig out a bed in front of the porch and we bought 4 tiny little boxwoods and planted them.

See? That’s all we had. Those itsy bitsy bushes are now huge, nearly 15 years later. Don and I were chatting on the porch this morning, remembering that there was nothing but a couple of hostas in the bed to the right of the boxwoods and some sedum in the big garden bed. Nothing else. I planted everything else; the three garden beds on the far side of the house, the bed in front of the house, everything in the bed by the porch and the big garden bed, and the chicken wire fence garden and the memorial garden. Don was telling me that I should be proud of my work, my creativity, in creating all these gardens, and you know what? I am.

Especially when we are so homebound right now. This little oasis has made a huge difference in our daily lives. I cannot tell you how much I love our home and our property. The addition of Don’s work on the paths in the woods and the work done in the Secret Garden has made an enormous difference, as well. I dreamed for decades – literally, decades – of a little cottage in the country with gardens everywhere and it finally came true. But not until I was in my fifties. I’m here to tell you it can happen.

Just grateful for what we have today as we know so many are unable to pay rent or mortgages, are out of work, don’t have enough money to put food on the table, have run out of unemployment. We have to fight for them. Because the GOP has shown, by and large, that it won’t.

Stay safe.

Happy Thursday.

Day One Hundred Forty-One

Day One Hundred Forty

Day One Hundred Thirty-Nine

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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