WRITERS' OWN BOOKSTORE NEWS

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Dear Angela

I respectfully agree to disagree.

“A bricks and mortar shop” is precisely what readers want.
My reasoning in believing this is simple enough: writers are generally interesting people with interesting ideas and many of whom have visited unmapped dimensions of thought, their experiences similar to adventurers and pioneers. Would-be book buyers want to share in that cerebral exploration somewhat (perhaps having discovered that life is greatly enhanced by a full intellectual experience) and play the role of the author’s sidekick and confidante. How thrilling then for the reader to meet this torch-carrier, the writer of the prose which has been so engaging and the inventor of such characters of intrigue. So quite apart from the social occasion visiting a bookstore – with coffee, tarts, chairs and tables – the reader can legitimately anticipate interacting with powerful minds, even visionaries.


Hiding in front of TV’s, video games and Yes, even computer monitors doesn’t hold a candle to shaking the hand of an Einstein, Hawking, Huxley, Michael Ondaatje or Angela Burns.

Reading text on screens at home alone supposes that the material is so riveting that joy can be elicited from this solitary experience, and the writer so sure of their brilliance at wordcraft that readers will be wholly satisfied with their pristine (sterile?) body of work.


“Websites are cheap,” Yes, and as effective as an ice cube retail stand in the arctic. They tend to glorify the writer meanwhile expecting the potential buyer to be so moved as to write and send a cheque or provide PayPal their credit card number and then pay for the shipping.

Ebooks can work for research and data transfer but isn’t it so much more fun to hold a new, nicely bound text in your hands and crack that spine for leaf after leaf of the stuff of surprises? And even the paper itself may have its own unique feel and story about its creation.

The print-on-demand aspect of the enterprise would be approached with a separate business plan and no commitment made until viability is clearly established, justifying purchase of printer/binder equipment. But imagine the control we would be wresting from the hands of conventional publishers who have been reducing our take(for our life’s work) to 7% and the retailers who fire-sell us in their big box discounts bins. And shipping freight back and forth from publisher to retailer and back again is a total no-win situation for the scribe.

I invite all the writers with whom I am corresponding to join this debate and also make contributions of anything else on their mind by posting to my four year old The English Bay Banner – the forum for Writers’ Own and a platform advocating social justice.

And no matter where you live in British Columbia, a one week window display and intense promotion of your work to the Vancouver market can’t hurt.

Finally, as to costs to writers: 200 members would get the monthly stipend down to $20 for a home-made-artsy-crafty kind of effort. And what fun!


-Harry Langen

Angela Burns Replies

It's an interesting idea, Harry, but I don't think it will fly. A bricks and mortar shop is just not smart these days. Authors and publishers need to look outside the 'box' (sorry for the cliche).

I'd much rather see members create a distributor and ensure that books are placed in independent bookstores around BC. Most books are produced in digital format for printing, so a website offering downloadable versions for a small fee would also be a good idea, and generate some income for authors. Websites are cheap.

It's important that authors have their works available to be read - by any means available. E-books are soon going to replace print copies - simply because they will be more accessible. Google and Amazon are gearing up to flood the market with them. I love books and bookstores, but this is the future. If we don't recognize this, we will all go down together.

Readings by the author or a professional 'voice' can be done through audio files and made available online - thereby opening another market for books, and a way to publicize them. Audio books are a huge market.

I don't live in Vancouver, nor do I visit the Mainland - so a bookstore there would have no value to me, either as an author or a publisher. I certainly could not assist in the front.

Also, setting up a printing business is an expensive, complex proposition. It isn't something that can be done in a 'back room'. Print-on-demand shops, like Printorium in Victoria, have economies of scale and technical expertise. I use them and find their product both very good and affordable - as long as one understands the technical side - which I do.

So, digital media has to be considered seriously - websites, audio, visual - even a virtual shop fronts in Second Life. It would be a lot cheaper and give a bigger bang for the buck. Even a chat room devoted to authors and publishers would be helpful. There is open source software for this. We all need to discuss our trade - and not everyone can attend meetings or events.

If we diversify, we may survive.

Cheers,

Angela Burns
GSG Ltd.
Publisher/Editor/Writer/ etc.

Dear Fellow Author,

I’m shopping an idea around to all the members listed in the Federation of B.C. Writers.

Let’s get some publicity and attractive window display for our book(s) at a retail shop that we own. As a group we can afford to rent a store downtown Vancouver and each author will get one week of window display and chance to read and promote their work intensely throughout that week. Before and after, their work will be on the shelf with posters and such to attract attention of the browsers; and as an incentive to the shoppers the writers will always be welcome to commingle on site with their would-be readers. And hobnobbing with fellow writer/authors, some of whom may be wildly successful, might be fun, huh?

To keep costs down, I propose that, given enough of us, we could each do a 4 – 6 hour cashier shift per fortnight and keep the store open from 8 – 8. Other books can be ordered from our computer access to amazon.com at wholesale rates; but the focus of the store will be to promote local writers.

The readings and access to the authors should generate some public interest and hopefully may cover the monthly cost of running the operation. If enough authors are relying on a print-on-demand process, perhaps we could look into printing and binding our own work in the ‘back room.’

It’s all just germinating now so let me know if this idea appeals to you. And if you are enthused about this and would like to see this idea come to fruition then call me about how I can best allocate a half hour a month of your time.

For more on me, see www.deadsearevelation.com or have a cruise around my e-zine at www.ebaybanner.blogspot.com

Cheers, and hope to hear from you.

- Harry Langen

Back in the Saddle

Horseshit from the Mounties
Armed to the teeth with deadly sidearms, batons, their eight trained fists, handcuffs and the currently dubiously underrated electrifying tasers, four members of the RCMP managed to kill an unintoxicated, frustrated man from Poland whose only crime it appears was that he threw a little temper tantrum when he couldn’t find his mother at the airport. Boy did those fellas in the noble serge teach him not to misbehave in Canada… permanently.

As members of that goon squad attempt to defend their deadly behavior on that occasion explaining why one of them over-tasered the poor man from Poland, Mr Robert Dziekanski with five trigger-pulls, others have already retracted and changed their testimony, obviously laying waste to their original horseshit excuses.

FLASH! The video account of the horrendous incident does not reconcile with the testimony of the trigger-puller! Will he now change his original testimony to keep up with the revolving-door testimony of his brothers-in-arms?

It is hoped by Yours Truly that the government of Poland will recognize all this as pathetic ducking and weaving and exercise its right to charge these morons in uniform with manslaughter. Reports of dozens of cases of abuse including incidents of death during incarceration and glaring omissions (leaving a couple lost in the frigid wilderness at Whistler) are shining a light on soiled uniforms and ugly tactics employed by miscreant members of what once was a truly heroic organization.

This load of recruits which were hired during the disgraced former commissioner Zacarelli’s regime seem to be disproportionately populated by thugs having been hauled out of some redneck sewer to dress up in pretty scarlets and long black boots, eager to swing their batons and deploy their tasers a multitude of times (as opposed to deploying their hand-to-hand combat skills which might require a hint of courage). If it were ever proven that these four at the airport were preordained by attitude toward violence during their encounter with the exhausted victim, Mr. Dziekanski – who was apparently in the surrendering mode just prior to being jolted to death – then let the law be enforced to its fullest extent and have these men charged with murder right here in Canada.

The sunny days of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon are clearly past and in view of the many accounts of RCMP abuses in the last decade outdated and obscenely over-romanticized.

Perhaps it’s time for retailers trading in tourist trinkets to remove all RCMP statuettes, bobbleheads, pictures of them parading around on horseys with spears pointed at each other and any other iconography glorifying their heroic past until they clean up their bloody act once and for all.


Prime Minister Rides in for some Wild West Gang-Bashing

In a recent letter to the editor of what used to be an alternative press newspaper and which has weirdly morphed into a celebrity-worship rag, the writer seriously suggested that the Hells Angels be approached to police the other gangs because after all they know the ropes and the inner workings of gang management.


Duh?

Our Prime Minister who apparently privately yearns to win a Prime Mortician Look-a-Like contest thought he would drop by and pretend to inflict some gang-bashing in an effort to stem the flow of bleeding bodies piling up on our streets. By extending the jail term for murder and drive-by gunplay he seriously expects to inject the fear of God into these stoned dunderheads who really couldn’t give a crap about anything. They’ve watched and played so many dehumanizing videos where killing gains them points that now some concrete-haired politician is the least likely to make any kind of impact on their chosen lifestyle.

Let’s get real. The only way to sink their ship is to blow a hole in their treasury. Follow the money. Every ‘successful’ gang is laundering its ill-gotten profits (selling meth and crack to kids) by establishing businesses with legitimate licenses and renting properties from cooperative landlords and using turn-a-blind-eye lawyers to come out on the other side smelling like roses and doing charity work through their local business councils and such.

There’s a simple counter measure here. Just demand of your local common media that all businesses owned by members of gangs be listed in the paper and a boycott called to prevent them from conducting any more over-the-counter trade.

The downtown eastside of Vancouver is in the state it’s in because the gang there is renting property, calling them hostels and fronting the addicts with crack who do their sidewalk trade. Close those hostels and prevent that gang from ever securing any business license whatsoever, forever.

No amount of gushing over the Olympics with the huge cost overruns being allowed is going to distract from the embarrassing truth that Vancouver’s civilian populace isn’t really acting very civil towards its homeless population and its addicts who are being poisoned daily by these gangs. A fraction of the funds that have been earmarked toward the two week Olympic spectacle could go a long way to establish affordable housing, and debugging of current city-owned housing (which defy the health bylaws) and assaulting the so-called legitimate businesses owned by gang members through media supported boycotts.

With the extinction of this moral malaise in Vancouver, rather than deepening it by our persistent indifference we could actually enjoy the Olympics and take pride in our city as we host tourists from around the world, knowing that we are looking after our own and eliminating the elements of an insidious underworld.

Toughen up, folks. It’s the only way.


Curiouser and Curiouser

While the 12 theories of Creationism are abounding in debate clubs around the civilized (ahem) world, we find a mention in Science magazine that footprints precisely resembling modern man were discovered in sedimentary rock in Kenya and dated to 1.5 million years ago.

I wonder how this ancient prehistoric man amused himself in those way-bygone days? Given the propensity of the native cultures for casino-building one might be apt to guess gambling might have been part of their leisurely way, after all that hunting and gathering or pizza delivering. Who’s to say?

And then there was that bee in amber dating back tens of millions of years ago and with bees, don’t we find honey and where’s there’s honey are there not bears and perchance to dream - bear rugs?


In short, it would appear that the ecological balances to sustain man and beast have been with us for what might be described as time immemorial. Somewhat bolstering my mentor’s rather brave comment I heard when of the tender age of 17 he spoke, “Man has always been man.” And his interesting ‘cousin-comment’: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Which supports my own belief that enlightenment must occur here in this dynamic environment, on this splendid earth, amidst these wondrous elements and under that mysterious personality of the infinite which manifests itself as the radiant sun. No matter how many lifetimes it takes. We need to acknowledge the perfection around us and then allow ourselves to be enjoined with it.

And who knows? Those footprints probably belong to one of our previous manifestations and here we are still fumbling along denying our perfection. Oh blessed day, come hither.


Something Wicked This Way Comes

At 89, James Lovelock, has made a seriously dire prediction about what we as a species can expect in the not-too-distant future. Lovelock, the scientist who originally rang the bell of warning that the earth, being a unified living organism he called Gaia, was at risk from man's bumbling about the delicate balances of the eco-system.

Our great grandchildren will inherit death on a grand, cataclysmic scale with rising sea levels, floods and the creation of new deserts. And this soothsaying he believes is founded in reliable science which affirms to him that this doomsday scenario is too late to avert.

Oh wicked day, get thee thither.




My Mother's Passing

Two days before I knew my mother was gravely ill I wrote the following...
You can kiss the underside of the ground upon which Yahovah walks and persevering with whispering prayers and persistent to the point of annoyance to all, witness Him - at last! - pluck you into divinity.

Such is the bounty of Light.

My mother, Molly Sullivan Langen Pirie, passed away two days later on December 15th, 2008 after a two day ordeal and a second heart attack. She refused to have her hospital room phone hooked up (to prevent I suppose worrying her sons. She said at the time, "I'll wait til I get home.") so I could only pass messages on to her through the nurses. I suspected she was quite ill and so my last message was "You're not alone." She died the next morning at 3 a.m.

It was her good fortune that her parish priest was by the day before on his rounds and noticed her and correctly detected her grave state. He offered her the Last Rites and she accepted happily.

She died in peace in the eyes of her Lord.

As a church elder and member in the Catholic Women's League she was also responsible for the cemetery where many of the Langens are buried - the Sacred Heart Catholic Cemetery, at Red Rapids. She had fundraised for its upkeep and the establishing of a bell there to be rung at times of interment. Appropriately, as though by Design, it rang the first time for Molly's.

The following memorial was passed out at her 'viewing' at the funeral home and all 50 copies were taken up gladly by my distant cousins, great uncles and her many friends.

She was born in the year of the Tiger, 1926, according to the Chinese astrological calendar. And this ancient lore informs us that Tiger people are sensitive, given to deep thinking, capable of great sympathy. They can be short-tempered and occasionally impulsive but are courageous and powerful souls. Maybe Molly’s life was indeed written in the Chinese skies because it’s not far off the mark at all.

In the war years, Molly was the eldest of four sisters whose father, Louis, had recently been killed in a roadside accident as he was walking his plow horses home. To help her mother Mary, Molly was picking enough potatoes to fill 80 barrels a day earning 10 cents a barrel, and at week’s end she sure was looking forward to her night of dancing at the old Silver Slipper dance hall. This, she made the point to Mary, was her treat to herself.

She managed to save $12 for a bicycle and began to make personalized Christmas Card sales biking to the old farm homes separated by two or three miles each. She was well received by her neighbours, many of whom began to eventually rely on their charming young saleslady for magazine subscriptions, cosmetics, information and gossip about their little community of Rowena and their Victoria County. Molly had established her sales run and was very pleased to find her innovativeness, courage and perseverance paying off at $50 profit a day! She saw an ad in a slick magazine for a Buick Wildcat and Lord Jesus by God did she ever want that! And a Wildcat just like her, bustin’ out with mischief and life, all revvin’ to get up and go and not so hard on the eyes either.

But she would still be making her sales by bicycle for some time yet remembering fondly from those exhilarating days her first tippling episode, with Mrs Ed Tomlinson who got along famously with Johnny Barley Corn. In that one afternoon Molly managed $62 in profit and a precarious and wobbly ride home. (Good thing they didn’t bring charges in those days against young lasses for operating a bicycle while under the influence.)


At 18, Molly started to teach school at Crombie Settlement with 13 students, from grade one to six. She excelled at teaching, her attentiveness to each pupil, her loving care, her bounty of good human qualities all came to shine in the classroom. She remembers to this day how those students were so “sweet and well behaved, and so willing to learn.”

And they remembered her. Isaac Goodine remembered his teacher, Miss Sullivan, and decades later recom-mended her for the Certificate of Appreciation which was presented to her by Mr Goodine, then the Chair of Human Relations, World Academy of Letters, on October 7th, 2004. It read in part, “She is a most inspirational and caring teacher who guided me through the 6th grade and is still a loving mentor today.”

Her young teaching career included the schools at Foley Brook, New Denmark, and Gladwyn with 52 students from grade one to eight (including two of her sisters); the California Settlement; Medford and South Tilley.

She married the war-ravaged George Langen when he returned from duty on the front line and had three sons by him - Roger, Scott and Ronnie. The family moved to Toronto following so many other maritimers to the big city. George worked with a law firm there playing “wrinkle-fender” every night to get home while she dabbled in real estate sales and waitressing before landing another teaching job, this time for six years at St Philip Neri in Downsview, Ontario. There they bought their first real home for $10,000 on Lorne Bruce Drive in 1955. It was a cold mile in winter to walk to school every day.

All the boys attended St Philip Neri and Molly looked out for each of them, managing to cover their medical expenses and boyhood needs while her brilliant husband George was holding court, dispensing free legal advice to the neighbours bearing beers, and gradually descending into alcoholism. He was often heard lamenting his move from the forests and fishing streams of New Brunswick.

Molly had to make way for more academically qualified teachers coming to St Philip’s. She had served the nuns as chauffeur and gave much of her personal time to that institution but it was time to find another job and she did at the Toronto International Airport as an insurance saleslady. She started at 5 a.m. and after her shift there was over at two p.m. she went to work at Lockhart’s on Jane St. keeping books and once again building a sales network, this time for auto parts.

Seven solid years of work at the airport came to a close when the ladies were let go for younger lasses. Molly had learned by then that injustices were commonplace in the work environment of the modern world, especially for women.

She was building the Lockhart business and soon became a celebrity – “Molly the Muffler Lady” featured in newspapers and on national radio. With the Lockharts, she bought lakefront acreage around Bracebridge, Ontario and built a “hunt lodge” (called such to get around building inspector licensing problems). It turned out as a magnificent many-roomed cottage, and her son Scott and his wife Trudy bought land adjacent to it. Many happy autumns were spent there hunting deer, and in summer with the children of relatives and friends playing in the yard.

She finally returned to New Brunswick in the mid 90’s and made all the applications necessary to return her hospitalized husband there too. George died after two decades of institutional-ized veteran’s care during which Molly never abandoned his personal welfare nor neglected to bring him his smokes and new clothes.

She was courted by the charming Alton Pirie of Tilley, NB, a successful landowner and potato farmer, and father of 11, and she married him when they were both in their 70’s.

She keeps busy visiting her old friends, dancing at the halls, playing cards with her Aunt Bea and writing emails and letters to her family, friends and the politicians she lambastes - and touring in her gutsy new Chevy Impala (having somewhat outgrown her old Buick Wildcat).

Her boys have all met with varying degrees of success: Roger as a teacher and union executive; Scott as a business owner and salesman (both husbands and fathers in Ontario) and Ronnie as a writer and more recently a real estate salesman in Vancouver.

She is the doting grandmother of seven, and stays in touch with each of their lives, always with a kind word and a patient ear.

Her many nephews and nieces, though spread across the continent, all are very dear to her and they regularly swap stories.

Her boys have all inherited Molly’s compassionate nature for people and are proud to know that she is remembered most fondly by not only her many former students, the Dionnes, Goodines, Finnemores, Rattrays, ONeils, Kinneys, Hamiltons and Brooks and countless others but also her old clients, the Bakers, Boones, DeMerchants and so many more.

When any one of them encounter her dropping in on socials in their beloved rural New Brunswick, they respond with warmth and affectionate hugs.

And quite naturally there are many in heaven who still remember the wildcat on the bicycle who brightened their days with her laughter, her stories and her love. Indeed, as such God-given love of humanity is to be remembered and cherished forever.