what about the plastic animals?

What the Dickens?

As I've probably mentioned before, when I'm traveling I'll often stop in to the local library to see what's going on and to pick up a bookmark or two.  Sometimes the library is really beautiful inside, sometimes there's a local history display.  I'll skim through the local newspaper and check out the collections.  You'd be surprised at how many libraries have really terrible weather and climate books from the 1970s still in the stacks.  People, support your local library!

In the fiction section I'll look to see if they have any of the original editions of Dawn Powell's novels, and since I'm in the POWE's I'll also look for Richard Powers.  Haruki Murakami isn't too far away, neither is Richard Russo in the opposite direction.  I'll check to see if they have an edition of David Foster Wallace's first novel that pre-dates Infinite Jest.  All but Powell have had books on the best seller list.

This is where I got confused in Luling.  There was no Powell, which is not surprising.  No Powers either, which happens sometimes.  No Russo, no Murakami, no Wallace.  This was getting unusual.  I started looking for other authors.  No Jonathan Lethem, no Chuck Palahniuk (really wasn't expecting to find one of his), no Truman Capote, no Willa Cather, no Jack London...  There was plenty of James Patterson, Richard North Patterson and Danielle Steel.  I thought maybe they had separated popular fiction from literary fiction, but no, on either side of the Steven King section was To Kill A Mockingbird and The Old Man and The Sea.  I found copies of Catcher in the Rye, East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath.

It was amazing.  I had never been in a library where the fiction section was almost entirely mass-market publications.  My two favorite finds were the Dickens novels above. Sorry, that's not such a great photo.  What I liked about those books are the covers.  Do they look like wallpaper to you?  They should.

Cabin Fever

On the side of Bank Street Bookstore in Morningside Heights.

Twilight Town

Forks, Washington used to be the logging capital of the world but the timber industry has been on the wane for years and now the primary source of industry has been a love triangle between a human, a vampire and an werewolf.  The Twilight series of books and movies are based in Forks and the locals have not wasted any effort trying to cash in on their good luck.  I didn't see anyone looking for Edward, Bella or Jacob, but the above is but a small sample of the many downtown businesses offering souvenirs or tours.  The light switch is in the men's room at the visitor's center.

Books and Apples

A double-header of events today.  In Brooklyn it was time for the Brooklyn Book Festival. Authors, publishers, booksellers and sometimes all three in one person were present in front of Borough Hall.

Across the river on the Lower East Side it was Apple Day.  I spent so much time at the book festival I almost did not get to Orchard Street for a fried apple pie from Melt Bakery.  If that pie looks familiar I ate the same thing last year.

Mistaken Identity in Wheeling

Tonight's topic is the Internet version of the telephone game aka Chinese whispers.  Before reading any further, compare my photo above with this picture.  At first glance they are almost identical.  Look closer.  The colors are slightly different and the books are arranged differently on the shelves.

The photo above is one I took when I was in Wheeling, West Virginia a couple of years ago.  I didn't post it here but I finally uploaded it to my Flickr stream last September.  The sign is outside the Paradox Bookstore across the street from the Centre Market in Wheeling.

From September 9th, 2010 until August 8th, 2011 the photo garnered 52 views.

On August 6th, the look-alike photo was posted to the Tumblr I linked to above.

Three days later a link to that photo gets posted to a reddit books sub-community.  A big discussion about how wonderful this policy is ensues.  In the middle of that conversation someone writes that's not the original, my Flickr photo is the original and that everyone should go see my photo.  That resulted in almost 1200 views in a day.

That got my attention.  At first I was ticked off but then I noticed the photos are different.  I'm not a reddit member so I couldn't point out the difference there, but I did update my Flickr caption. 

At around the same time the reddit discussion takes off the photo also appears on Imgur.  Someone on that site also mistakenly points to my Flickr photo as the source.  I'm not signed up to Imgur so I can't leave a correction there either.

Interest wanes as the week goes on but by yesterday my photo has about 1700 new views.  By comparison, the original Tumber has over 40,000 notes and the Imgur page now has over 164,000 views.

At lunch today I checked my Flickr stats and they are spiking again.  Over 2700 new views.  As far as I can tell LettersOfNote, which has lots of Twitter followers,tweeted a link to my photo.  Ninety-one people then retweeted it.

So, thanks to a couple of cases of mistaken identity (Tineye is not perfect!), the picture above is now the second-most viewed photo on my Flickr account.  This is first, in case you were wondering.

People!  Do not miss tomorrow night's post.  It will be a good one.  I guarantee!

Powell's and Portlandia

I knew I wanted to spend a day or two in Portland on this trip but, other than visiting Powell's, I didn't have any particular thing I wanted to see or do.  That resulted in a lot of pointless walking around and not much picture taking.  I did get to see Portlandia, the second largest copper repoussé sculpture in the United States.

Bookmarks of the Pacific Northwest

These are almost all (I found one more after taking this photo) the bookmarks I collected while in Washington and Oregon.  There's a mix from the conference I attended, public libraries and bookstores like Powell's and Elliott Bay. 

The six black and white bookmarks in the lower center are unusual in that I paid for them.  They are from the Friends of the Multnomah County Library gift shop in Portland.  The bookmarks are reproductions of the steps in the library's staircase.  Someday I'll scan them for a closer look.  The only other paid-for bookmarks in my collection also come from a visit to Portland back in 1985 (or was it '86?).

Also of note is what may be the world's most voluminous bookmark.  I was driving through Tillamook, intending only to gas up the car and take a quick tour of the famous Tillamook Cheese factory (and perhaps get an ice cream cone therein).  The high school on the south side of town is proudly labeled "Tillamook High School - Home of the Cheesemakers".  That made me want a Tillamook Cheesemakers t-shirt so I parked the car and wandered around downtown Tillamook looking for a shirt. 

No luck.  The screenprinting shop was closed for the day and a quick walk around didn't uncover any other business selling them.  So, it was off to the Tillamook County Library.  That double height yellow and white bookmark unfolded into five 8.5 x 14" pages of "inspirational fiction" listed by author.  That alone is inspirational!

On a side note, the list of things I forgot to photograph (Aberdeen welcome sign), ran out of time to see (Port Townsend) keeps growing.  Today I learned about the Peculiarium which opened in Portland a few days after I passed through town.  Maybe I have to go back soon!

Also In Cooperstown

A few other sights from Cooperstown.  The extravagantly aforelocked James Fenimore Cooper, son of the town's founder and namesake, is next to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  The rare plaster cast of Cooper's torso was on the other end of Main St.  An exuberant Brooklyn Dodgers fan, Stanley Bleifeld, sculpted both Johnny Podres and Roy Campanella in honor of the Dodgers' only World Series title.  Bleifeld gave the sculpture to the Hall of Fame.  Finally, no comfy mall or department store for Cooperstown kids!  If they want to see Santa they've got to stand in line outside. 

Blue Sky

The sky turned a lovely shade of blue this afternoon.  If you stare too long you'll see an X in the middle of the photo.  It's some sort of lens flare.

Crossing 116th Street at Broadway this evening I saw this guy.  A couple of years ago he won a prize for his glow-in-the-dark nematodes.  The weird thing is that at the same intersection several years ago I saw this lady, who won a similar prize, but for writing.

Tortured

Downtown Charleston has a small arts and entertainment district.  There was a folk singer playing at this nice little bookstore/coffeehouse on Friday night.  Not knowing what else to do in Charleston, I stuck around for a while.  I didn't return for the local author on Saturday as I had to meet Dane and the Mothman up in Point Pleasant.