Completely wacked out

Yers truly hit a wall of overwork late Monday night, complete with stupid insobriety and messy meltdown. I'm just counting down the minutes until the library's annual meeting is over with and I can get back to the usual excess of work, instead of the extraordinarily crazy excess of work. Books coming down the pike very shortly:

• Wings of Fire, by Frank Keim
• The Long View, by Ross Coen
• Freebird, by Layla Lawlor

After these, I may just give up book publishing. I'm certainly not accepting new manuscripts, and I'm now taking one month off a year from the Republic.

The publishing biz

Publishing is, frankly, a pain in the ass. I mean, it's great to bring out all the wonderful works that would otherwise never see the light of day (because they're too off-beat, weird, Alaskan, or poetic), and I just LOVE doing book designs, but most of the publishing business consists of my two least favorite things to do (and this includes changing the catbox, folks): data entry and marketing.

Y'see, publishing isn't just about bringing the creative mind to print: it's about getting the public to actually read those delightful books, which means getting the public to buy them, which means getting the books in their hands, which means getting the books in the bookstores, which, inevitably, means getting it into wholesalers' hands, which means a whole lot of trouble.

And that's just marketing: advertising, sell sheets, catalogs, booths at conferences and markets and bazaars, enticing descriptions sent to booksellers, and so forth.

Then there's all that data tracking: how much of which sold for what to whom and when at what discount. How much postage, how much my cost/profit/loss was, how much royalty to pay, plus the office management stuff and associated bottle washing, counting, and related bottle overhead costs. And the like.

When a new book comes out, it is immensely satisfying to know that a gem like Marjorie Kowalski Cole's collection of poetry has finally gotten Out There, or that Jamie Smith's cartoons will be Preserved for Posterity in collected form, or that Neil Davis' careful research into the American health care system can be shared with people who need to know how to navigate the misanthropic mine field that we call insurance. I LOVE bringing books like these into the world.

But god, I HATE selling them.

Marjorie

Marjorie Kowalski Cole died on Friday, December 4. I'm in the process of working on her book of poetry, which is ready for the printer for all extents and purposes (except that the biography of the author needs to be rewritten slightly now).

There was a memorial for her last night, to which Hans and I intended to go, except that we couldn't find St. Raphael's Catholic Church, where it was held. We drove around and around looking for it, Hans getting steadily more and more frustrated and tense because of the traffic, and me finding it funnier and funnier because the church was obviously well-protected against the possibility of atheists ever darkening its doors. We even stopped in to Fred Meyer's in a vain attempt to find a phone book and asked directions, which turned out to be to the Church of Latter Day Saints. We finally gave up and went to the Eagle, where we drank a toast to her honor with Irish whiskey.

I'd only gotten to know Marjorie (although I knew her by sight before that) from her contributions to The Ester Republic. I was delighted that she submitted her book manuscript to me for publication; Inside, Outside, Morningside should be out in January or February. My favorite poem by her is still "Ice Cream."

One of the things I liked about Marjorie was that she was feisty. She stood by her convictions. She founded Call to Action Alaska, a chapter of the national Catholic activist group Call to Action (which supports women's ordination, among other things). They helped bring Col. Ann Wright up to Fairbanks for her first speaking tour in Alaska. I think Wright stayed at Marjorie and Pat's house.

Ester and Alaska have lost a good person and good writer who made the world around her a better place. I will miss her.

And then there isn't

Well, the first lecture in the John Trigg Ester Library series has been cancelled, alas. But Marjorie is still on for the Oct. 3 literary reading at the Bear Gallery. And she wrote up her comments, so we may have them available for posting on the library website soon.

And then there's poetry

Oh, right. Forgot another thing. We (the library committee/board) have been talking about this for a while, but it's finally getting off the ground: the John Trigg Ester Library Lecture Series. Marjorie Kowalski Cole has agreed to be the inaugural speaker, and will kick us off on Wednesday (Sept. 30, 7 pm at Hartung Hall). She'll be speaking on poetry.

Libraries aren't just passive repositories of information: they are cultural centers, hosting and sponsoring all kinds of events that bring people and ideas together. The Noel Wien library has story hour for kids, hosts talks and movies and book discussion groups, trains people to reach out to kids in the schools (the Guys Read program is a great example of this), and so on. The Ester library has so little room that it has been unable to do much of this. With the gazebo, we can do some things, and now with our library lecture series, we can do more--even though we don't actually have a space of our own in which to hold events.

Still, it's a start. And once we have our own, actual library building, we will be able to do much more for the community.

Bar blogging, books, and music

Well, the below two posts were a little rough; I'm not used to this live blogging thing. Missed parts of the conversation between Don and Mike (where Mike explained that yes he had heard of the bag ordinance and no, he'd voted against it).

I spoke with Pete Bowers during Mike's musical event about the possibility of bringing the Into the Woods cabin to the library land; that would be nifty to get that historic building back in action again. From Everything2.com:

An excellent coffeeshop/alternative bookstore located in Fairbanks, Alaska very near UAF and next to the Oaken Keg. Yours truly slaved there one summer cleaning books and pulling espresso for darkness starved poets, celtic musicians, drunken carnies and your average itinerant Alaskan workers.

Into the Woods paid $7/hr. in books and a portion of the evening tips. The other portion of the tips went to the mandatory 11:55pm run to the Oaken Keg for Into the Woods Afterhours, a key reason to work there indeed. There's nothing like drinking beer with your employer at 2 in the morning and wishing it was dark so you could actually get some sleep.

And an entry on the end of its existence as a bookshop and indeed, a cabin in the woods where it was built:

A small town bookstore/coffee shop died too quietly January 1, 2001. Into the Woods was the renegade bastion of human evolution; set neatly off from the road it was hidden from everyone by old and cool Alaskan forest.

I worked there off and on for a few years and in that time we had weekly Celtic jams, French classes and films, a G'wichin table, Green party meetings, song writing workshops, poetry readings and several surprisingly well-received concerts. Open noon to midnight every day we could find a willing worker the bookstore was one of scant few businesses in this mostly frozen (frozen in so many more ways than literal) town that didn't encourage the sterilely generic Seattle-Starbucks look that is growing so hip up here.

Our last year was too much of a struggle though. The owner had to take a job up North to keep the shop open and summer light-all-the-time mania burned out our over-worked employees at a monthly turnover. Finally an unfortunate and overly principialed brawl with the land owner (the University of Fairbanks) left us owing back rent, no access to the bank roll and a letter of eviction.

So, we rallied the troops and wrote a petition, spoke with the President of the University, raised money to cover back rent, cleaned up the land and worked on the shop itself. Then we asked for another chance. In retrospect I think we were too idealistic to think that the University would take our bid over the possibility of renting the land to some commercial business that would bring in far more money than our beautiful no-profit.

We moved 8 years of books and life out of the cabin then decided to take the shop with us. In an endeavor unlike any other people filed diligently out of the proverbial woodwork to help move out and move the building. The actual structure of Into the Woods is now 3 miles out of Fairbanks waiting empty in different woods.

Last month the University evicted the neighbors on the old land and razed their house, taking quite a few old trees out with it. We resorted to civil disobedience and took 5 dead stumps back to the University in time for Earth Day. We left them at the Commons, the cafeteria, the dorms and at the office of the President. Nailed to each stump was a signed letter stating our disbelief of their total disrespect for the originality and heritage of the land and a high class glossy photo of an amanita from the land. A couple days later we spoke with the President to gauge his reaction... he smiled blankly on a said he had absolutely no idea of what we were talking about.

The university didn't end up leasing the land to anybody. The trees are still standing, the property remains an empty lot. But the cabin was rescued, along with the manuscript that describes its history. Pete Bowers and John Goodhand have had it, still ready to move, on property near Cripple Creek Tire & Auto (now known as Everything Auto, I think, but nobody calls it that). Pete wants to use it as a place for music and poetry slams, which I think is just fine. We could move the library books associated with both, open it up as a place to practice or jam, put out a donation jar to pay for electricity and fuel, and keep it going in the spirit it developed as a bookstore and coffeehouse back when Connie Huffman was running it.

Into the Woods revived!

Publication prognostication

Right. So, assuming my various authors haven't given up on their extremely tardy publisher, the list of forthcoming books from the Ester Republic Press stands as follows:

• Inside, Outside, Morningside, a collection of poems by Marjorie Kowalski Cole;

• Freebird, the collected comic strip by Layla Lawlor;

• Wings of Fire (tentative title), a collection of poems on birds, by Frank Keim (possibly illustrated);

• a collection of poems by Ann Chandonnet;

• a cultural history of Fairbanks revolving around the Nenana Raft Classic, by Ross Coen (manuscript pending);

• a collection of history columns by Ross Coen (possibly; manuscript pending);

• Letters from Siberia, a collection of letters home from a then-young geologist in Soviet Russia sent to work in the area of the Siberian gulags (this will depend on receipt of the complete manuscript from David Stone).

An interesting batch.

The Editors' Revenge: hilarity at the expense of politicians

It's an occupational hazard: editors, if the ones I know are representative of the field, compulsively edit. And that includes the often poorly composed political speech. We do it for money, we do it for amusment, we do it because we love picking nits. Vanity Fair decided they couldn't stand it, and provided this priceless edit of Sarah Palin's sayonara speech.

Say I: HAH HA HA HA HA HOO HOO HAR HAR HEE HEE HA HA HA!

Ahem.

Big tip o' the hat to Ross Coen for forwarding this link to me.

Publication prognostication

If all goes well, and the various long-suffering and patient authors haven't given up on me yet, I'll be publishing four more books within the next six months or so, possibly five (har! it is to laugh!). These are:

1. Inside, Outside, Morningside, a manuscript of poetry by Marjorie Kowalski Cole

2. Anne Chandonnet's poetry manuscript (no, I haven't forgotten or given up on this, Anne--I only hope you haven't given up on me!)

3. Frank Keim's collection of bird poems. This, I'm hoping, will be an illustrated work.

4. Freebird, a graphic novel/cartoon strip collection by Layla Lawlor.

5. The Ester Republic Telephone Directory and Local Et Cetera, 5th edition.

Website delay

Although the paper has been out for several days, the Republic's website is still back in February. This is because I don't have internet access at my new office, so I can't upload the new pages and probably won't be able to for some time. So, for those of you who are curious, here's what is in the new issue:

• a cool cover photo of bubbles trapped in ice, by Doug Yates
• "Bobblehead Leadership at our Swell University," an opinion piece by Richard Seifert
• "An Alternative Thought," an editorial by yours truly, on media consolidation, alternative newspapers and 'zines, and the copyleft movement
• a cartoon by Jamie Smith on the Obama campaign
• miscellaneous letters to the editor from an emperor and a few of the rabble-rousers around here
• a cartoon by Dan Darrow on Tom DeLong and GVEA
• a cartoon by Jolene Schafer-Howell on walrus and ice
• a cartoon by Jeanne Mars Armstrong on teacher conferences
• a book review by David A. James on Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR
• library news update (lallapalooza coming up soon!)
• the Publisher's Picks
• an outsourced Thought Posse Report
• poems by Shanna Karella, Sarah Sarai, Gregory Shipman, and Frank Keim
• "How I See It," by jean lester
• part 2 in the self-reliance series by Phil Loring, "The Farmer-Pirate and Other Cautionary Tales"
• an error correction from the Yes Men
• "Iron Prices, Inflation, and Mining Consolidation," by Stephen Hannaford
• "Singletrack Trails Proposal for Ester Dome," by Geoff Orth and Joel Buth
• The Long View by Ross Coen, "Fire and Skiing at the Lodge"
• "The Emma Creek West Fiasco," an opinion by Hans Mölders on the borough/Ester meeting at the fire hall on March 12
• "The Missionary Position on Lyrics," by Neal Matson
• "Women's Day--Iraq: Surviving Somehow Behind a Concrete Purdah," by Dahr Jamail
• "Dose of Reality: Alaska Health Care Lobbying" by Neil Davis
• "A Conspiracy of Ravens," by Richard Seifert
• a cool photo of Dave Hyland on his mom's old Polaris snowmachine

Available for sale at a coffeeshop near you! or at least, one in College. I'm working on finding one nearer downtown.

Project Status Report and a few miscellaneous musings

For those of you interested in publishery doings, here's a little status report on the various book etc. projects:

Like a Tree to the Soil: paperback published, book signing accomplished, now working on the hardback!

Haines CD: I received the final list of readings and now need to make the final adjustments to the layout, then send it to Pat Fitzgerald and Susan Todd for checking. I'm looking forward to hearing this--I've never heard John Haines read his work.

Jamie Smith cartoon collections: I'll be sending out the revised RFQ to the printer this week (probably tonight); have to get a signature loan to cover the print cost, etc. I've got one galley each and now just need the sell sheets to send to potential distributors. Jamie came over yesterday and showed me oodles of cool posters he's done. He just gets better and better. Gangly Moose has been the recipient of much of his talent.

Mired in the Health Care Morass: blog in full swing (author on vacation for the nonce), advances received and going out to reviewers, main shipment expected before the end of the month, working on the sell sheet, and expecting the brochures next week. Gulliver's has scheduled a book signing for February 28, although in part that will depend on whether the books get here in time. Might be one week later.

Jorgy: This one's in layout, a slow slog. I'm still working on the graphics, as is Jean Lester, and the design, although pleasing, is a bit complicated, and so it's going slowly--and I hope to god there's no major layout changes, as I'll have to redo substantial portions of the book if so. I'm almost at the point where I have a page count and so can give the printer a final request for quote--and then a price! It's a very interesting history both of Alaska from the 1920s through the end of the century, and a personal tale of aviation in Alaska as experienced by a damn good Native pilot who flew with Northern Air Cargo, Wien, Munz, and a ton of other little airlines and air cargo services. I love books like this: I learn a lot of Alaska history. Jorgensen talks about segregation in Nome, hunting and trapping and mining in Haycock, flying the DEW line, mail runs, tricky airports, the kinds of planes he flew, being in the Alaska Territorial Guard and the Alaska Scouts, lots of interesting stuff. There's a bunch of nifty pictures, too.

Ann Chandonnet's poetry manuscript: I just received this, although Ann and I have been discussing it for a while. I'll be looking it over to make sure it's something that will fit the ERP.

Frank Keim's poetry manuscript: Frank and I are still discussing this, and we'll be meeting soon.

I have a few other manuscripts in the works, too, mostly concerned with local history.

And of course, that mainstay of my publishing career, the Republic (v. 10 n. 2, issue #107, Feb. 2008) is in the works as always. I've got a ton of submissions, mostly from men this month, not very many Esteroids. I still need a movie reviewer.

Did I want to sleep? I didn't want to sleep. I've had plenty of dreams and snoring in my youth, lots o' nap time. I can do this for a while. Sure.

More designwork: Haines poetry CD

This little project is something I've been working on for Susan Todd, who is producing a CD of John Haines reading his works, poems and essays. I'm looking forward to hearing this when it's done. John Haines, for those of you who don't know, writes very funny political limericks for amusement (he's entered every one of the Republic's annual limerick contests), is an incredible poet in general (lots of awards, Alaska's third poet laureate), and is a tough old homesteader who lived for decades out (way out) on the Richardson.

Pat & Robin over at 10th Planet Recording worked on the sound edit, and Kathy Turco of Alaska's Spirit Speaks did the engineering. Pat Fitzgerald and Robin Dale Ford are well known for their music, and Kathy is an amazing collector of sounds, which she's supplied to major movie studios (in major movies, even).