Rick Simonson

Back to It ... and Just Before
January 2, 2008

Some of us novices (at this) hadn't realized pw.com was going dormant for a patch of time there, not that we were up to writing much. Guilt was in the air ... and there was/are a lot of things on the alleged mind of Mist Place ... not all of the holiday hurry, either. But while much of the publishing/book world went off on its merry way, those of us on the retail end were at it as much as ever ... including the week after December 25. So, some relief that things in the virtual world weren't churning along.

Before setting off into the vast terrain of the new year ahead - and not to do the major rearview mirror rehash that has been with us in newspapers and magazines (and reps will be fishing for data, too, to feed New York ... know that ...) of late, I was writing a little about the heightened zaniness of one stretch of retail busyness. It's from the heart of the holiday sales rush, but has its correlations to other paces and sequences at other times of the year. This was an all-at-once sequence - and doesn't attempt to convey all that was going on. The eight-ten other staffers behind the counter, helping people who were generally coming from one direction, the pathways away from the counter - to giftwrap, to finding books, to sorting out what would get wrapped, what wouldn't, the hollered questions across the way about a pending jobber shipment and whether hot titles were in it and how soon they'd be received - nice, noisy ordered chaos.

The Swirl, a Passing Moment

Friday, December 21.

It's midday, going full tilt. It's a sequence of moments where depth of vision is about four feet - who is right there, who is next and wanting assistance, and what kind of assistance ... are you ready? more questions? need suggestions or finding? And trying to be mindful, seeing certain titles going across the counter - is the display stack of this still there? More copies to fetch, or something to replace it ...

So it is going the last full weekday of the season's rush. We've got a full crew going, all of us - save assistant manager Jamil - who is keeping company with Roberta Rubin, Roxanne Coady, and Marva Allen back in New York. The Today Show had flown him all the way back for a segment of independent booksellers' holiday recommendations. The rest of us are at it, a seasonal complement of giftwrapping crew on hand, too. This day is keeping them busy, is keeping all of us that way. We even have a ringer, though in lieu of the occasional rep who has jumped in for a few days of the craziness, it's ABA's Oren Teicher, come to help work the floor, help with whatever. It's been fun - he's been given a crash-course on some of our systems, gotten some orientation as to how we try and do things, and has plunged in wholeheartedly.

It's very much 'may I help who's next' mode, when the person stepping up in line for me to help, I realize, is our city's wonderful representative in the U.S. Congress. Jim McDermott is as much a regular for us as anyone can be who is ostensibly based in Washington, D.C. much of the time, with the other travels that go with the job, too. He's a reader, and been part of things we've been involved with. I ended up pinch-hitting for him in introductory duties for an author at one event last year (a disappointment for those attending, let me assure you), and this past spring, he was a fairly anonymous part of a readers' chorus in a staged 'Bloomsday' reading from Joyce's Ulysses. Today he was looking less the cogent Congressperson and a bit more the somewhat befuddled Christmas shopper, not quite sure of what all he's supposed to be up to, and left a little too much on his own. But there is also quick other talk as I try and sort out what he's wanting - he's lamenting the recent closure of a local hardware store in his neighborhood. He's talking local business issues, those versus the chains. Ah, I quick-say, I've got something for you to read then ... and I start describing Stacy Mitchell's Big Box Swindle (Beacon), newly out in paper.

We'll get to where that is eventually, but there is still what he has me doing there at the counter. Meanwhile, I hear a familiar voice, glimpse over, and see our city's most recent National Book Award winner doing his own check-out thing at the counter. Clearly, he's been asked about signing stock copies of the rapidly dwindling supply of his novel (our bestseller, suffice to say), which had also been plugged that morning by Roxanne on The Today Show. He's doing the I gotta get out of here more places to go holiday shuffle ... there are some bantered comments about basketball, and poof, he's out the door (though I later hear he did sign books for people and did some handselling, recommending to someone that they buy World War Z. In the middle of all this, still standing there, I hear my name, and see my friend Donna, she who owns a wonderful restaurant and with whom I've been on a local board. She's doing her own dart-in, dropping off little presents to people, quite literally (I later see) a sweet thing. She's there and gone in a flash. All the while, it's still Congressman Jim and I getting his transaction done.

That accomplished, I take him over to where Stacy Mitchell's book is displayed, first doing an introduction of him and Oren. They have common ground to go over, from local store issues, to another Washington State congressional representative, Jay Inslee (an author of late), and a former colleague of Oren's wife. While they talk, I go get Big Box Swindle, and a few other things I know are getting low up front. Parting words are then said - for the holidays, for family, for the work ahead.

Back to the counter and helping others, one of the very next is Seattle author Anna Ballint. For all the other attitudes and aptitudes on display with people, she is clearly in some other place. After the usual initial greetings - I think she also has something to purchase - but there is something overriding that with what she then says: 'Did you hear? Sandy died this morning.'

It is in this way that I hear Sandy Taylor, co-founder with Judith Doyle of Curbstone Press over thirty years ago, and whom I've known for most of the thirty-plus years, has passed away.

In the flow of that Friday, what Anna told me was something I took in, saying a few acknowledging words, my own silent pause ... but then the fray had to be engaged. Later, going to write this later that Friday, and again, Monday morning the 24th (after a full weekend of work), I found I could write about that whole hurlyburly sequence, but when it came to Sandy Taylor's passing away ... I did have to stop. Pay silent respects.

And say here how much he and Judith Doyle did, have done, and do, with the invaluable Curbstone Press. It was part of a generation of smaller literary presses begun in the early and mid-70s, and equally, part of a group that made the transition to more secure, non-profit status. In the company of Graywolf, Copper Canyon, Milkweed, Coffee House, and others, Curbstone was unique in hewing to both literary quality and poltical engagement. They actively published and promoted poets and writers from earlier members of the US's 'axis of evil' - Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries resistant to US imperial dominance, and Vietnam, as well as voices all too invisible in this country.

Where no one else would, Curbstone published Luis J. Rodriguez's groundbreaking coming-of-age memoir, Always Running, getting it into readers' hands everywhere. Some of Elliott Bay's most memorable nights of author readings have been Curbstone ones: Luis with Always Running, the great Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan novelist Gioconda Belli, and, at the Seattle Public Library, an utterly raucous, but powerful bilingual group reading by Wayne Karlin, writers of Vietnamese descent living in the U.S., and writers visiting from Vietnam.

The publishing of books was only part of it. I am not one that knew Sandy well, though we worked together, wrote, talked (he would call, would send notes with books and galleys), always feeling this incredible sense of larger mutual purpose and persistence. He helped many others do their work, too - writing, publishing, getting vital books and writers' voices into people's hands. He also was always sending people to each other. It happened with numerous writers. There was also an early supporter/board member of Curbstone's who somehow was in the mortuary business. That work took him all over the U.S. (I was never sure I wanted to know how), but he always came into Elliott Bay, bringing greetings from Sandy, word of what was going on. In reading more about Sandy, I had my surprises: I knew he wrote poetry, I knew of the college teaching (Eastern Connecticut State College/University), but hadn't realized or remembered that Danish literature was so much of that. 

Tributes, an obituary, and more, are all on Curbstone's website (www.curbstone.org), including links to blogs by Luis Rodriguez and Bobby Byrd of Cinco Puntos. One of Curbstone's 'newest' authors, poet/translator Sam Hamill, a person in a position to know Sandy over the decades is quoted there, putting it aptly, calling Sandy "a workhorse for peace, for engaged poetry of non-violence, for human dignity." Alexander 'Sandy' Taylor will be dearly missed by those who knew him and many who didn't. The great, good work he and Judy helped create exists - and goes on.

So last year ends, and this begins.

Posted by Rick Simonson on January 2, 2008 | Comments (0)