Sustainable Capitol Hill

I've been a fan of  Sustainable Capitol Hill since it started a few years ago, but I haven't participated in very many of their activities, mainly because I just don't like going to meetings...  Recently, however, Sustainable Capitol Hill has started a book group and it's a lot of fun.  The group met for the first time last month at Bluebird creamery (a meeting with ice cream and beer!) and threw around ideas for books to read on the theme of sustainability.  We decided to read What Matters? Economics for a Renewed Commonwealth by Wendell Berry which we discussed at the June meeting, and we are currently reading Seattle and the Roots of Urban Sustainability by Jeffrey Sanders for the next meeting.

The book group meets the first Thursday of every month, 6 to 8 pm, at Bluebird, 1205 E. Pike Street.

Here are the other books on our prospective reading list so far:

Berry, Wendell

Bringing it to the Table

Bryson, Bill

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

Capra, Fritjof

The Hidden Connections: Integrating The Biological, Cognitive, And Social Dimensions Of Life Into A Science Of Sustainability

Carson, Rachel

Silent Spring

Diamond, Jared

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Edward Abbey

Desert Solitaire

Eisenstein, Charles

Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

Fukuoka, Masanobu

One Straw Revolution

Hawken, Paul

The Ecology of Commerce

Jensen, Derrick

The Culture of Make Believe

Klein, Naomi

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Lappe, Frances Moore

Diet for a Small Planet

Schumacher, E.F.

Small is Beautiful

T

You Can Be Healed

I found this nondescript little black book at a thrift store: You Can Be Healed by Clara Palmer, published by Unity School of Christianity, Lee's Summit, MO, 1950.  This is a book about the body and its functions written from the point of view that the body and everything it does is pretty miraculous, with some very reasonable and common sense advice on healthy living, including promoting vegetarianism.

For example, about "Your Intelligent Liver," the author tells us:  "There is no laboratory in the world where a greater or more painstaking work is done than that which is carried on within your liver. It is helpful for you to know something of the functions of your body in order that you may work intelligently with them instead of thoughtlessly working against them.  Have you ever joyously thought of your liver in terms of appreciation for the good work that it does for you?  It is a tireless worker.  It is constantly abstracting certain materials from the blood and converting them into new substance that can be appropriated by the body for its upbuilding or eliminated from it when its purpose has been accomplished."

What interests me most about this book, however, is not the book itself, but the notation left behind by a previous owner:

"Tonsillitis:  To heal tonisilitis I use the testicles of a rabbit and the (sometimes) inside of a perches mouth.  (Sometimes the grayling chicken is very helpful in these cases.)  (Also in cases where a new life has no testicles) from having had tonsils removed before death.)  The penises of men that I have used instead of my size they are larger is a fish (not a tarpon are the larger sword fish as these are what is found in the caskets or on the horses) but this smaller sword fish I use for sizing men's penis is a replica of the ram's penis which normal size for now the use of extremely large fish has caused many monstrous abnormalities such as I have seen in Ronnie Fields, etc."

Yow.

Sticker on Sign Post

Colophon

Traditional physical book forms have interesting and charming elements that add to the aesthetic pleasure of holding and reading a real book.  One such element that is not often seen anymore (as most of the information would now be given on the back of the title page, the copyright, or imprint, page) is the colophon.

A colophon is a note at the end of a book that gives information about the printing of the book.  In early books, before there were title pages the colophon was the only place to find this information.   In more modern times, colophons are found in books printed by the "private press movement" - presses devoted to printing books as works of art, rather than as a commercial venture.

This colophon is from a book printed in 1941.  The small image at the bottom is called a printer's device.  Here the colophon gives information about the printing processes used, the engravers, typesetter, and bookbinder.

Addendum

There's a lot of talk in the book world about what the future of books will be.  Some fear that the physical book will disappear or become a niche collectible item, as has happened with vinyl records.  This question brings to mind the physical qualities which add charm and make books unique, such as inserts, and how much I will miss them, should they ever go away.

Recently, in handling a book, A Pictorial History of English Architecture, by John Betjeman, (published by John G. Murray, London, 1972), to my amusement the following printed card, about the size of a standard business card fell out of the pages:

Be careful when going to Australia!  It's always best to use the third person for authority and emphasis.

This card is a fine example of an addendum, thus defined by Wikipedia:

In a book, an addendum (sometimes referred to as an appendix, plural appendices) is a supplemental addition to a given main work. It may explain inconsistencies or otherwise explain or update the information found in the main work, especially if any such problems were detected too late to correct the main work. For example, the main work could have had already been printed and the cost of destroying the batch and reprinting is deemed too high. As such, addenda may come in many forms — a separate letter included with the work, text files on a digital medium, or any similar carrier. It may serve to notify the reader of errors present, as an errata.

It's interesting that digital books apparently may have addendum also.  I looked for the photos of the buildings offered as cautionary examples by the author of the above book, and they were in fact hideous.

On another note, I have been interviewed by the IOBA regarding my experience attending Rare Book School here: An Interview with Amy Candiotti, IOBA RBS Scholarship Winner

And Sean is mentioned in a SLOG post about the recent May Day protests in Seattle here:  Why All the Smashy-Smashy? A Beginner's Guide to Targeted Property Destruction.

Why Pistil Books?

I am being interviewed by the IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association) for a feature on their website, and one of the questions that has come up is why we chose the name Pistil Books.  This has been an oft-asked question during the life of our store, and quite frequently we've been mistakenly thought to be Pistol Books.

Here's a postcard we used to send out (images and definitions from a children's dictionary) by way of explanation.

We chose the name Pistil Books because we liked the play of the word pistil, a female flower part, versus pistol, a gun. A homophone with two very different meanings. From the sound of the word, it's unclear which pistil/pistol we are.  As a part of a flower, pistil evokes the idea of growing, living, flowering... and in the case of books, flowering knowledge.  A slogan for Pistil Books (it's printed on our bookmarks) is "Seed your head."  

We have used flowers as a theme for our business - our retail store had a stained glass sunflower window, as well as a colorful flower mosaic we made on the floor (it's still there - though our old retail storefront is now a burrito joint). 

We now have flower mosaics around the exterior door of our office/warehouse, a lovely vintage three-dimensional scientific model of a pistil on a shelf above my desk, and a flower/bee/knowledge theme on our website.

Crap Hound

When Pistil Books was a retail store, one of our specialties was zines - those small, independent, often self-published periodicals that embodied alternative culture in the days before the internet and electronic publishing.  Crap Hound, edited by Sean Tejaratchi, was one of our favorites and a best-seller.  Crap Hound is packed with high-contrast black and white images gathered from vintage commercial and graphic art based on a theme.  Past issues have covered the subjects of  Bait, Devils & Clowns;  Hands, Hearts & Eyes; Death, Telephones & Scissors; and Church & State.

We are pleased to offer for sale the latest Crap Hound #8: Superstition published by Show & Tell Press.

Flipping through the pages, here are some of the multitude of images you'll see:  Butterflies and moths, apples, New Year's bells, black cats, hats, crows, fish, wrapped packages, horseshoes, books, doors, boots, owls, snakes, storks, fences, and more.