Found in Books February 2022

 Our Found in Books collection this time features a vaccination card circa 1971.  "Mike" a red Irish Setter received his rabies vaccine.  

Why yes, I do have a restless urge to write.

And someone cut out the images of Tarzan book covers from a calendar - more muscles and tan skin, please.

A poor drawing of a fancy chandelier, photo booth strip, and map of an Indian temple are some of the other found ephemera in the past few months.

Found in Books, May 2021

It's been an entire year since I last posted photos from my "Found in Books" file.  This edition's presentation from May 2020 to May 2021 features a lot of the classic FIB material:  Ticket stubs, boarding passes, photo booth strips, naked guy photo, drawings, travel brochures, letters, receipts, and photocopied book pages.

Some of the more unusual findings are a JC Penney full-page color ad for $8 "antifreeze flannel shirts"; a postage-paid postcard to the Washington State Employment Service (a.k.a. "unemployment office") with a doodle and some notes; a yellow index card with two-sided lists of 61 birds seen in July 2006 in shaky ballpoint pen; a currency exchange rate card with pesos and dollars from Pardo's Gift Shop in Mazatlan, probably from the fifties or sixties; and a ticket to the haunted house, "The House that Eats People," sponsored by NEAT, a non-profit corp.  

 

There was also a faded pasteboard sign wisely advising, "Pay Your Grocer FIRST.  When you pay your bills, give your Grocer FIRST MONEY.  He supplies you with what you need most--FOOD;" an order form for Modern Taxidermy Books; a Red Cross card for someone who completed CPR - ADULT.  And a poignant list with two columns:  "Observable Change" (try to be more organized and neater, try to [down arrow] internet porn) and "What is Changing"  ([up arrow] weight, [up arrow] road rage)."

Found in Books - Spring 2020 Edition

It's spring cleaning time, and time to empty our "Found in Books" folder and start anew.

This time we have some of the old standbys--  bookmarks, invitations, photographs, boarding passes, transit tickets, receipts, drawings--  plus some new book inserts that we haven't seen before:  computer programming cards, an information request card for "Nuclear Diodes, Inc."

Postcards, early computer printout, bar mitzvah invitation, drawing of train on tracing paper, and pamphlet for the Sixth International Congress of Radiation Research.

There was also a pink note stuck into a book titled, Mud Pies & Other Recipes that said, "I always thought it was a waste of good pie in a  pie throwing but I would enjoy seeing this one, wouldn't you?"

A note on the back of this owl/deer/heart artwork says, "For the best couple ever."

"After seeing children in grammar school at play, doing very active activities, I've come to the conclusion that childrens wear can be very simple and still have that 'darling' look."  This paper titled  "Field Trip to Grammar School" received an "A".

This Dodge Dart was serviced regularly with detailed record-keeping.

Someone had a very large and carefully-kept Agnes Moorehead clipping collection.

Agnes, Baby!  She was Endora on "Bewitched."

Found In Books - Spring Edition

Once again it's time to show off some of the things we've found in books that have crossed our desks here at Pistil Books. 

Our treasures this time include pressed flowers and leaves, lottery ticket, "Lighter of the Month Club" stickers from Bic, bookmarks (of course), a sheet on the "Seven Factors of Awakening", a Christmas gift card from France, a sheet on drying flowers, a French publisher's advertisement for books on "Esoterisme", an entry form for a drawing, a boarding pass, something written with a fountain pen and a flourish and a penny stamp, a Book-of-the-Month Club invoice, lyrics to a song: "It's time to get us a clue / It's time to take off the mask / It's time to turn it around / It's time to learn to relax....", a chart of emotions having to do with anger, disgust, sad, happy, surprise, and fear; someone's collection of clippings on Max Ernst, some artwork including a slightly racy drawing and one of rose paintings, a form for bindery instructions for a library, and some patterns for Captain Ludlow's jacket.

There's a tiny pointing arrow captioned, "Ass for Cash."

Found in Books

It's been a while since I've posted photos of some of the ephemera found in books, and the envelope holding such objects has grown fat.  

Included this time are the usual bookmarks (from bookstores and torn from handy sheets of paper), gift tags, drawings, tickets, and personal notes.  In one card someone writes, "Now that I know from the medical examiner's report the severity of her AVM condition, I wonder if M--- knew or at least had a premonition of fatality.  Just after her first MRI she intensified her study of Buddhism which focuses on preparing in this life for one's next life."

Remember phone bills?  Spanking, cirque & sensuality, oh my!

Bookmarks from shops, The Ten Commandments (from St. Jude's Ranch for Children), and Legend of the Raven are just a few of the ways people keep their place between pages.

Cards from card catalogs... as rare as phone bills now.

Found in Books

Found in Books, Yet Again

Not long ago, Sean and I were doing a book buy at a woman's house.  She was moving and was selling her pretty nice collection of books on eastern religion, psychology, body work, and the like. I flipped through a book to check for marking and two hundred dollar bills fell out.  A couple of other books also had money bookmarks, and they weren't mere dollar bills either.  Of course we returned the money to woman who was quite grateful and now our found-in-books karma has benefited.  Alas, no money of late, but check out these treasures:

One thing we found in a book titled "Reproduction in Farm Animals," was a love letter, which may be a little too personal to include in the photo, but here's an excerpt:  "Do you see that I am terribly in love with you and terribly obsessed with you?  Make sure you take responsibility for this state of my heart.  Let's see whose poison is more poisonous!"  There was also a photo of the young lovers as Disney characters.

The fortune teller card is one of my favorite pieces, and obviously applies to me:  "You have a brilliant mind and enjoy reading and the fine arts."

Drop another coin in slot and I will tell more.

Another favorite is the business card, how's this for a job title:

This little dragon is made from paper cut-outs and is really quite lovely.

Here's a bookmark from a store with 89 parking spaces - that's 88 more than Pistil has!

Found In Books

Usually I feature a number of items in my "Found In Books" posts, but this time my latest find warrants its own post.  This piece of ephemera is double-sided.  On the first side is a page from a grammar test, appropriately titled (from a bookseller's point of view), "Getting Words in the Right Order."  I know I sometimes have trouble with that.

Our intrepid test-taker seems to have answered all questions on this page correctly, as the green check mark attests, but his total score is only 70% (remember, we have only one page of the test).  Could you have answered this question:  "What is a nominative absolute, and does it have to be edited?"   Huh?

But it is on the reverse side of the test form that the true talents and skills of our student are revealed:

Sissies Rule!

Ephemera

This weekend I went to an estate sale with my friend Tim.  We were planning to go garage saleing, but this being Juneuary in Seattle, it was too rainy for outdoor sales.  Sometimes sales advertised as "estate sales" are really just misnamed yard sales with small piles of crap, the sellers not realizing they have to be dead to really qualify for the more esteemed term.  This small modest house in the Queen Anne neighborhood was the real thing.  There's something a little creepy and sad about estate sales:  the literal contents of a person's life-- drawers, closets, shelves laid out for strangers to rummage through and worth only pennies. Since the estate sale was held now, in 2012, you know the person was alive fairly recently, but often their possessions seemed to have stopped changing after a certain date, in this case 1978.  So much bright polyester.   I went straight to the bookshelves, which were pretty much filled with junk, but interesting junk, nevertheless.  For instance, a pamphlet published by Reader's Digest about "Joe's Man Gland."  Lots of beat up religious titles, nonfiction pocket books from the sixties, a cool children's ex-library book from the fifties on America's Heritage from the Ancient World, that I actually bought.  The books' owner was one of those people who leave lots of little scraps inside their books:  coupons, lists, notes, a paper butterfly.

The best find, though, was the Official Program:  Treasures of Tutankhamun which was exhibited at the Seattle Center in 1978 - and which is once again exhibiting in Seattle (and there's a really cool giant Anubis statue outside the downtown train station).  I remember King Tut mania from around that time period.  My fifth grade classroom had a decorated plywood box the kids were supposed to crawl around inside with a flashlight (like archaeologists!), answering questions the teacher had stuck to the inside walls with thumbtacks.  And who could forget:

King Tut (King Tut)
Now when he was a young man,
He never thought he'd see
People stand in line to see the boy king.
(King Tut) How'd you get so funky?
(Funky Tut) Did you do the monkey?
Born in Arizona,
Moved to Babylonia (king Tut)....

This program was published by The Weekly, a Seattle tabloid that still exists.  Besides the official program information, it's filled with ads for local businesses with Tut-themed graphics and copy.

 This publication is an example of what is known in the bookselling world as "ephemera":  "From the Greek work ephemeron, meaning something that disappears quickly. Examples are: manifestos, broadsides, programs, menus, tickets, playbills, etc." (Abebooks' Glossary)

Funky.

More Found in Books

The program for Raymond Burr's Memorial Service from 1993

A lovely drawing.

So many things pressed between pages.

There was also a letter to Dan Savage.

Found in Books

Found most often in book are bookmarks--those advertising bookstores, or decorative bookmarks of one sort or another.  Then there's the bookmark of convenience--ephemera either forgotten or tucked away between pages for safekeeping:  napkins, grocery lists, to-do lists, homework, recipes, money, a silver certificate, poems, love letters, condolences, tickets, boarding passes, snapshots, drawings, pressed flowers, newspaper clippings, greeting cards, postcards, comic strips, invitations, a valentine, calling cards, membership cards, coupons, letters, prayer cards, business cards, a motion sickness bag, lottery tickets, pamphlets, a page torn from a calendar, a sheet of music, a report card, envelopes, photo booth strips, doodles, notes, a quotation written in inexpert calligraphy on an index card ("There can be no rainbow without a cloud and a storm--"  The Wind in the Willows), receipts.  Some recent favorites include a bunch of hotel receipts, diplomatic invitations, and calling cards from Paris in the sixties found in a set of nice hardback Proust volumes and a poem written in ballpoint on a page torn from a spiral notebook found in You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense:

Fuck Suck Shit  Piss Fuck Suck When you feel Your life Is Zero Charles Bukowski Becomes Your hero

In an earlier post I wrote about making collages from Golden Book publications.  Here is a link to some wonderful postcards made by sometimes Pistil shelver (or un-shelver), Andrew Bleeker:  Alice Blue Review

Reading Notes

I am about two thirds the way through The Best American Short Stories 2009.  So far I've not made any great discoveries of writers whose work I want to pursue.  The two stories I like best are both set in China:  "NowTrends" by Karl Taro Greenfeld, and "A Man Like Him" by Yiyun Li.  I'm also reading the current issue of Harper's Magazine, which has a great editorial about Haiti.