A roving book gathers no dust

It’s amazing how peaceful and still a bookstore can be early in the morning, a few hours after the closing booksellers have locked up, trickled into their respective homes, and tucked their aching feet into bed; before the front door has unlocked for the day’s customers and all their human joys and problems. It’s the kind of amazing you can only really understand if you’ve worked in a bookstore and been cured of the misguided notion that they are calm, orderly places to begin with, stocked with friendly, fashionably dusty books, or stately classics standing sentinel on shelves awaiting passionate and slightly nerdy readers to pull them off, smell their pages with secret delight, and take them home to sit on nicer, wooden bookshelves and grow old with the thumbing of eager fingers. If ever all my dreams come true and I find myself owner of my own small bookshop on Main Street, this is the way my books – and my customers – will be. And I shall reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who doesn’t have proper book etiquette.

Most bookstores, however, hope to at least scrape by with a semblance of a profit and will take any customers they can get. And so the modern bookstores – at least the ones that survive – are corporate and trendy, a marketer’s dream, and sit in strip malls next to restaurants and movie theaters where people who find themselves with time to spare between the two can wander in, collect dozens of magazines from their proper places on the shelves, and plant them stealthily throughout the store, behind books, under tables, and in the bathrooms, as an amusing pastime before the movie starts. In the modern bookstore, the doors open and awaiting customers rush in to buy the latest self help or “How to Become A Millionaire on 20 Cents a Day” book to the whir of the blender mixing up frappuccinos and lattes in the cafe where not even a small tidy bookish cat is allowed to show so much as a whisker for fear of violating some health code or another. For this, the rest of the store suffers too: no cat napping on a stack of books, no singing canary or tended geranium in the window to let you know you are in a place of beauty and truth and excitement and intellect, a place of kindred souls, and paradoxically opinionated harmony.

Back in the children’s section, some disobedient child or another strings books and plush across the floor in clear sight of its conveniently near sighted parent who has some newfangled opinions about never telling a child “no” and who apparently never learned manners from the child’s grandparents. Some blasphemous faux-author has published a book called Pride and Predjudice and Zombies and it sits shamelessly on the shelf next to J.R.R. Tolkien, pretending not to hear Jane Austin rolling over in her grave. And some young teenager who will never know the joys of Wuthering Heights or Gone With the Wind picks it up and walks around the store with it until she either buys it or deposits it on a shelf somewhere in the travel section. The globes are plastic, not metal, and nobody ever looks at them.

And by midnight, because corporate retailers don’t have the decency to close at a godly hour, the store is a veritable mess, with manga, and sex books, and magazines, and crummy children’s literature lying in heaps thither and yon and Poe and Shakespeare forgotten on a shelf somewhere. The computers are whirring, and the air conditioning, and the florescent lights. And booksellers are marching back and forth like sleepy ants collecting and replacing and tidying here and there.

The few dark hours that the bookstore catches to itself are, I suspect, more peaceful than any I have seen there. I observe it only at the end of these dark hours, when the booksellers come trickling back in, only a couple at a time, and set to work again. But the store feels rested. Rested and renewed, and the books do stand rather like sentinels, proud upon their shelves. Though by tonight, they will lie again, haphazard and bent, this morning they represent anew the truths within them, they recall the paths they have forged and lighted. This is the time when I walk between the shelves, my feet soft against the carpet, and the store is a place for books again: not uncouth children or negligent adults, or movie-goers or complainers, or caffeine junkies, or thieves or Playboy purchasers – though true readers can be all of these things. When you strip away all the corporate retail “charms,” you find that after all there is something innate in printed volumes that remains intact despite all these things. And it is amazing to find, in those few early hours, that you can still hear their quiet, timeless strength and wisdom.

-R.E.A.

Study shows that lowering minimum-wage could end world hunger

A recent scientific study has honed in on the problem of obesity in America and in a mindboggling show of scientific and social expertise has determined that low income is the culprit. The argument begins with the supposition that poorer people generally have less access to fresh, healthy food options which can contribute to poorer health. Now I agree that this is generally true, although it’s important to differentiate between rural and urban poor communities (as rural populations are more likely to grow their own fresh fruits and vegetables, whereas inner-city communities are more likely to get their only semi-fresh, hormone-enhanced greens at the 99 Cent Store – us city folk always get the short end of the deal). Nor do I rule out the possibility that lower-income populations are more likely to be obese. What I have trouble believing is that the lack of healthy food options, as brought on by an inadequate income is responsible for the obesity problem. It’s very convenient, don’t you think, that our country’s obesity issues have been found to not, in fact, be an effect of eating too much crap and having too little exercise, but rather the fault of...big surprise...the rich people. It’s only part of America’s growing awakening; in the past several months, we have apparently come to realize that, indeed, all of our problems have been brought on by the wealthy.

What I love best about the study is its solution to the problem: raising minimum-wage. There are so many problems with this conclusion and the way it is drawn that it must be some kind of fallacy, if only I could ever remember the list. To begin with, the study found “that minimum-wage employees are more likely to be obese than those who earn higher wages, adding to growing evidence that being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight.” “Being poor is a risk factor for unhealthy weight,” is a rather obvious statement, except that it seems to me that having no money would more frequently lead to unhealthy weight in the negative, rather than the positive (if you will) direction. Furthermore, anyone who has worked in retail in any kind of shopping center can tell you that a thirty minute lunch at a place like that doesn’t leave you much opportunity for eating anything other than greasy fast food, unless you are of the enigmatic and dying race of people who somehow have the time and energy to take a sack lunch to work every day. As such, I would be inclined to believe that it is the greasy fast food, and not the minimum-wage that packs on the pounds.

According to the study, raising minimum wage “could increase purchasing power enough to expand access to healthier lifestyle choices.” The rhetorician in me notes the use of “could” instead of “will,” as in “the sky could fall tomorrow, but will it?” I wonder what the likelihood is that raising minimum wage will actually make people living in poor communities rich enough to travel farther away to get healthier food. To begin with, if all the places that currently pay minimum wage had to pay their employees more, they would also have to raise the cost of whatever it is they are selling. Since a lot of jobs that involve getting different kinds of food to different populations require large volumes of minimum-wage employees, the cost of food would necessarily go up. Is it beneficial to a person to raise both their income and the things they purchase simultaneously? Of course, the alternative is to raise minimum-wage and put a cap on the cost of food. We all know that businesses are evil anyway. This would cause most grocery stores to go out of business, making unhealthy food for minimum-wage employees more difficult to obtain. Obesity problem solved! Except for the small fact that it would also make healthy food for minimum-wage employees more difficult to obtain. With the obesity issue in low-income populations solved, perhaps nobody would notice the correlation between minimum-wage incomes and starvation?

Besides this, the only way I can figure to calculate how much raising minimum-wage could directly expand access to healthier lifestyle choices is to:

1. Calculate how much it would cost for the average minimum-wage employee to travel to buy healthy food.
2. Calculate how much it would cost this same person to actually purchase the healthy food.
3. Add 1 and 2.
4. Calculate how much it already costs the average minimum-wage employee to travel to buy healthy food.
5. Calculate how much it already costs this same person to actually purchase unhealthy food.
6. Add 3 and 4.
7. Subtract the answer to 5 from the answer from 3.
8. Determine how much more each minimum-wage employee would need to be paid per hour to equal the answer in number 7.

As a side note, if the answer to number 8 requires that minimum-wage be raised from $7.75 to $20.75, should we consider any of the problems that might arise from a $13 raise in minimum-wage?

As a preface to what I am about to say next, I would like to mention that ever since my AP Statistics class in high school, which I thoroughly enjoyed (and no, I’m not being sarcastic), I have frequently argued that the greatest thing about statistics is that it means absolutely nothing. If the world were a vacuum, perhaps a perfect statistical study could be achieved. Since it is not, statistics is entirely bogus. It is my opinion that you could conduct the same exact statistical study and very convincingly and successfully draw two opposite and true conclusions from it. The secret of statistics is not that it can give you insight into a particular topic, it is that you can use it as fake proof that your own personal insight on a topic is true. This particular study had a sample size of a mere 6,312 people who were supposed to be a representation of the approximately 300 million people who actually live in the United States. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that 85% of those 6,312 people were men and 90% were Caucasian. So basically what the study can say with honesty is that out of a population of mostly white, mostly men (which does not exist in America), of the ones who were heads of households, those ones who were making minimum wage were mostly fatter than the ones who were making anything other than minimum wage. And what the study is arguing is that poorness leads to fatness. Mild disconnect? Maybe it’s just me.

In support of the argument that poorness leads to fatness, the study states that, “People living in the southern United States – where state minimum-wage levels are among the lowest – were more likely to be obese than people in other regions.” But I wonder, could this have anything to do with fried chicken? Baking chicken should cost about the same as, or less than, and use fewer resources than breading and frying it and yet somehow the poor minimum-wage earners in the southern states are growing obese off of it. Can we honestly blame minimum wage for this? What I’m saying in a mildly offensive and unpolitically correct way is that the study seems to completely leave out the effects of a person’s culture on what he eats. Canned corn, for example, should be reasonably available even in low-income areas where fresh vegetables are not available. Although canned corn is not as nutritious as fresh corn, it is significantly more nutritious, and probably cheaper, than, say, Taco Bell. Could convenience factor into bad eating habits? Could taste? Could education?

In keeping with the kind of thinking behind this study, I have come to the conclusion that if raising minimum wage would directly improve obesity levels in America, then lowering minimum wage would actually allow the starving populations in America to gain weight. The implications could even be global. Who would have thought that the solution to world hunger was as simple as lowering income levels? Now Americans are faced with a very difficult decision: should we raise minimum wage and save the obese people, or should we lower it and save the starving ones?

-R.E.A.

"I'm Nobody! Who are you?"

I saw lupines growing wild for the first time in my life last month, something to check off my List of Things to Do Before I Go. It may seem like a small thing to make a big deal out of, but ever since I read Granny’s Miss Rumphius and then found out that Lupines are California natives, I have dreamed of seeing them growing wild. Poppies of various types we have in abundance and they are one of my favorite flowers of all time. But an unfarmed field strewn with wild poppies and lupines both...I suspect you aren’t quite a real Californian until you’ve seen one. I spotted my first glimpse of purple in the Grapevine and something in my soul basked golden. Every Spring since time immemorial, the Grapevine has wakened to the golds and oranges and amethysts of the poppies and lupines tucked away between meadow grasses and mountain rocks, heedless of me. But this year, I was there to see it.

We had a beautiful time in the Central Valley: roaming around the City of Trees (which is not as lovely as, say, the countryside just south of it, but which is nevertheless quite charming as far as cities are concerned); coming around to the surreality (not a word according to the red squigglies on my computer – squigglies, according to the red squigglies, also not a word) of Jason going to med school there, and all that that implies; spending time with beloved friends who also happen to be good people; and jogging along the Stanislaus River (whose name alone can make you forget the my-legs-are-about-to-fall-off, I’ll-never-breath-again, why-can’t-I-just-be-fat feeling of what they tell me is the “best” kind of jog.)

There is a smell that comes up over a river in the gloaming with all the lush shrubbery growing by its banks breathing softly and the animals of the day settling into their nests before the animals of the night begin their stirrings, and a million insects, individual in their own rights, of the thousand billions of their kind. There is a smell that comes up over a river who has seen a season of good rain and decades of unchanging changingness. This is not unique to one river in particular. I think it is kindred of all rivers, though to a practiced nose the scent is subtly different, like nectarines from peaches. If I had to guess, the Stanislaus River smells slightly of almond blossoms, but I cannot speak with the certainty of a native of its banks. And doubtless much like the ocean, its smell alters with the ground against which it washes and the breeze that wafts above it, and the trees – or rocks – that grow along it and turn to mulch – or sand – over the course of many tomorrows.

There is something about a narrow green footbridge across a river that makes the person jogging across it feel important somehow, in the best kind of secret and humble importance, as though the river wants you there above its banks, and as though all the storms and quakes and ferocious winds of its history have deemed it all right that you be there simply by not bringing it down before you got there. Like the bend in some random road that brings you up on a field of wildflowers. They weren’t put there for you, certainly, but somehow you’ve been granted the privilege to partake.

There is a place called Alpine, Wyoming that boasts the only stop sign within forty miles. I think to myself that I should be very happy living somewhere just outside of Alpine, Wyoming, somewhere where the stop sign is not too much of an inconvenience, a place that will be sufficiently overlooked when people travel to observe the Alpine landmark, somewhere only secretly, humbly important by Alpine association. Should I ever move there, you will find me sitting somewhere on a narrow footbridge, surrounded by native flowers, feeling important in my obscurity. Don’t feel badly for me; I have been 23 years searching for important obscurity. I suspect it will be a good deal longer until I find it, but I know it can be done. Cowboys have done it, and some sailors, and perhaps those questionable people you see backpacking along the side of the road sometimes, with an old happy dog following along on a string. When I doubt it, I simply contemplate all the out-of-the-way footbridges I have never seen, all the silvery creeks, all the wild lupines, all the lone, rocky outcroppings upon which I have never perched. I think of sitting on a quiet hill in Buchanan, Virginia surrounded by Black-Eyed Susans and cows and blue country sky. Important obscurity. It exists. You just have to find it.

-R.E.A.

The Story of a Mollusk and What Did Not Happen Because of Him

I am not going to talk about healthcare. Instead, I am going to talk about mollusks. One particular Mollusk, in fact, who just happened to be a mussel and to live in a gentle River that wound and twisted between the low hills and through the woodland forests of a very beautiful country indeed. Here is the story of that Mollusk and what didn’t happen because of him...

Chapter 1: What Happened When the Eelgrass Grew Over

“I absolutely cannot do a thing about it. I haven’t the time.” argued the Otter, standing on the riverbed with his hands on his hips. “It isn’t as though I’ve had an easy time of it. The large fish were terribly low this year. And the small ones certainly seemed to be snapped up quickly.” He gave the Owl a rather accusatory look, as though owls, and this Owl in particular, were all to blame for his inferior fishing skills.

“Well,” said the Owl, ignoring the Otter’s stare, “Then I don’t know what to do now. I’ve tried but we owls aren’t very good at flocking together. We’re rather solitary creatures, you know.”

The Otter barely waited for him to finish. “Well, the River absolutely must be cleared,” he said firmly, “If the Eelgrass gets any thicker this Spring, the fish won’t even be able to get through. Then what are we supposed to eat?” As though the Owl didn’t know the situation.

Suddenly, the Otter snapped his fingers. “We’ll have the Mollusk do it!” he said eagerly, surprised that he hadn’t thought of it before.

It was the Owl’s turn to stare, “The Mollusk?” he said, “But the Mollusk hasn’t ever done a single thing well.”

“Yes,” said the Otter proudly, “But he has done a good many things poorly.”

Chapter 2: The Brackish Water Fiasco

“But we don’t want this done poorly!” exclaimed the Owl sharply. “It’s a very important matter. Don’t you remember the Brackish Water Fiasco?” The Owl didn’t wait for the Otter’s response. He took quite a delight in monologue once he got started. And so he began his retelling...

“When the Brackish Water came in, the catfish were the first to notice. ‘Gather together our best thinkers,’ they said, ‘If something’s not done, we’re all in for a great deal of trouble.’ But our best thinkers could come up with nothing in agreement. Some of them thought we should deal with the Brackish Water as we had dealt with similar things in the past. Others thought that new actions were required for the changing times. In the midst of the great arguing and upheaval that ensued, a lone mollusk stepped forward.

‘I will come up with a solution,’ said the Mollusk selflessly. And suddenly, everyone was silent. ‘But I will need time,’ he said. ‘I haven’t fins, like you,’ he said, inclining toward the catfish, ‘nor brains, like you,’ he nodded at the beavers. ‘So I need time. But I will find an answer.’ The Mollusk spoke with such confidence and the animals were so tired of arguing and arguing and getting nowhere that they agreed. They designated the Mollusk the Official Solution Finder for the Brackish Water Influx.

The Mollusk went under a rock and shut himself up and didn’t come out for six months at least, though the animals grew impatient and knocked several times on his shell. Those were the days when the Eelgrass first began infringing upon the River. Finally the day came when the Mollusk inched slowly out from under his rock. He wouldn’t say a word until he got to the center of the River and then, slowly, he opened his shell and revealed a tiny pearl. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, and ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he said again, ‘our grave problem, for which I went into hiding for six months at least, was Brackish Water. Ladies and gentlemen, I have taken our problem, and I have created a Pearl.’ And he opened his shell wide for all to see. And that was all he said.

Finally a timid sole spoke up. ‘But what does it do?’ asked the Sole.

‘Nothing,’ said the Mollusk with an odd look. ‘But it is beautiful isn’t it?’

‘But how will it solve the Brackish Water?’ asked a frog, who didn’t much care about the Brackish Water, but was still curious to see what would happen.

‘Yes,’ said a small trout, ‘it has very little to do with what we needed.’ But the Trout was only being polite. The pearl had nothing whatsoever to do with what we needed.

The Mollusk was offended, ‘I should think this beautiful Pearl would be sufficient for you, considering what I had to work with,’ he said stiffly. ‘Work requires gratitude and I should think I am entitled to some of that.’ And the Mollusk was so hurt that he inched back to his rock and didn’t come out for several days. And,” said the Owl taking a deep breath, “we still have Brackish Water to this day.”

Chapter 3: The Only Thing To Do Was To Put It To A Vote

The Otter cleared his throat politely. He, after all, knew the story and he didn’t care. At the sound of the Otter, the Owl came out of his reverie with a start. “How do you expect the Mollusk to clear the River, anyway,” he asked practically.

“He is very good at delegating responsibility,” replied the Otter, who had an answer for pretty much everything, though it wasn’t always a very good one. “It’s perfect. This way, we shall have none of the responsibility and shall be able to do all of the complaining if things go awry.”

“When things go awry,” answered the Owl sternly.

But the only thing to do was to put it to a vote. All the animals who cared about Brackish Water gathered, except for the many that did not. The votes were tallied. Then all that was left to do was to ask the Mollusk.

Some of the animals were surprised when the Mollusk agreed to take on the responsibility after what had happened the last time with the Pearl. The Mollusk was brave and inspiring and did not so much as hint at the incident. The animals felt very kindly and grateful toward the Mollusk and many went home that evening thinking that the Mollusk really was a stand-up a fellow after all, and that they could all learn from him a thing or two about forgiveness.

There could have been others like the Owl but they did not speak up. He suspected that the Mollusk had only agreed to the task for want of a new pearl to covet.

And that is the story of the Mollusk and what did not happen because of him.

-R.E.A.

word'i-ness (n.): using 676 words when 55 will do

One of my creative writing profs back in the day introduced me to this book called, The World’s Shortest Stories. Steve Moss, the compiler of these stories has (or had) a contest each year to see who could submit the best stories in 55 words or less. Here’s an excerpt from Moss’s introduction:

“How short can a story be and still be considered a story? Charles Shultz had an answer to that question several years ago in his ‘Peanuts’ comic strip. Crabby old Lucy was once asked by Linus to please, please, please tell him a story. Lucy grudgingly obliged. Said she: ‘A man was born. He lived and died. The end.’

That’s the shortest story I’ve ever read. But, like Linus, I was left somewhat dissatisfied.

So maybe the question should be asked differently: How short can a story be and still be considered a good story? What’s the briefest possible narrative that still allows for a satisfying read?”

Without a doubt, there is a difference between a story and a plot and most of the time we (or at least, I) expect both out of anything I am going to take the time to read for pleasure. E.M. Forster uses this example to define the difference between story and plot: “’The king died, and then the queen died,’ is a story. ‘The king died and then the queen died of grief,’ is a plot.” For him, the difference is causality. While both sentences have a time sequence, it is the plot that introduces an explanation. He writes, “Consider the death of the queen. If it is in a story we say, ‘and then?’ If it is in a plot we ask, ‘why?’”

I would like to add to Forster’s plot distinction. Being of the old-school lit critic class, I find theme drastically important not only to my life, but also to the literature that I enjoy. I think James Thomas would agree. Moss quotes Thomas in his intro: “Like all fiction that matters, their success depends not on their length, but on their depth, their clarity of vision, their human significance – the extent to which the reader can recognize in them the real stuff of life.” Needless to say, if writing a story in 55 words or less is doable, writing a story with a plot in 55 words or less is something more of a hassle.

You may be wondering at this point why I am writing what appears to be a rather shoddy sort of Literature 101 essay. In fact, you may have traversed so far into the realm of boredom that you have passed that wonderment entirely and are now simply wondering why you are still reading. I can only really answer the former of your wonderments. For one thing, I admit that I truly miss my days of writing shoddy lit essays. But the real reason is because of how the 55 word story relates to a quote by Josh Billings that I read a katrillion years ago. I was pretty young when I first started writing stories and I didn’t understand most things (some things never change) but even then this quote spoke to me because I had (and still have) an enormous problem with wordiness. Billings says, “The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.”

Writing short stories has become a way for me to practice "knowing when to stop." The 55 word short story takes this practice to a whole new level. Up until now, the shortest story I have succeeded in writing, and still loving, was 118 words over the limit. So after significantly more than 55 minutes of writing and many many more than 55 words erased, I have come up with two elementary attempts at the 55 word story, plots included (or at least attempted). They came out very differently from one another and with varying flaws. Here they are. I encourage you to try some yourself. They are surprisingly intriguing and surprisingly frustrating - part work of art and part logic problem.

First attempt (52 words)

Determined to Start Over

When Calvin turned ninety six, he decided his life had been miserably unsuccessful and determined to start over.

The doctors said they could do nothing.

Philosophers promised him it was impossible.

In desperation, Calvin prayed.

Came a voice: “You’ve started over thirty five thousand, sixteen times. How many more do you need?”

Second attempt (55 words):

Words Like Brushstrokes

Twenty years, words like lashes fell so forcefully upon her she supposed they were who she was.

Until she read somewhere, “All the world’s a stage,” – Words like brushstrokes on a painted scene – And she made her exit.

Looking back, she views the painting from afar, espying a raven perched above it. Quethes he, “nevermore.”

-R.E.A.