The Book Gallery (Phoenix AZ) is in a non-descript plaza, which from the outside does not attract the eye. I might have missed it if I was not looking for it. The place has the familiar and strong odor of antiquarian books. I prefer bookstores that have more inventory of books from the last couple of decades, whereas this store is filled with books that go back much further. I almost left on taking a few steps past the entrance. If I had, it would have been one of the biggest mistakes in my bibliophile life.
Stacks of hardcover books line the shelves as you walk to the back of the store. Many books are from the time when publishers did not turn covers into eye candy to draw a prospective buyer’s attention. On finding the Science Fiction and Fantasy section, I was mildly curious about the classic authors from the 1970’s and before – when I first started reading books. It was an interesting collection that reminded me of the classic greats who laid the foundation for the amazing writers today.
My attention waning, I turned to leave when I noticed a Dean Koontz novel, Seize the Night, had a “Signed by Author” tag. After looking over the $35 copy, I skimmed the shelves. It was like somebody sprinkled fairy dust on the shelving and a third of the books sparkled. I’ve never seen so many signed by author books collected in a single space for Science Fiction and Fantasy.
It was joyful and frustrating.
I felt awe looking at signatures of authors who I admire and enjoyed reading. Several of them inspire my ideas about fiction. There were many books that I wanted to take home, which would have been a challenge to pack for the plane, but they were expensive.
Refusing to leave empty handed, I settled on The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg. It’s a nice well kept signed 1st edition that was sold for $35. The same copy on Abesbooks was going for $100. It’s most valuable to me for being a story I read as a teen that stays with me today. There were a couple of other books I purchased—none signed but having great appeal.
The Book Gallery is one I strongly recommend visiting for the genres that you love. I know I’ll be visiting my book friends again, and, perhaps, take more signed editions home with me.
I love gardening. I took it up many years ago when I had a high stress job and was looking for a way to relax. Several of my friends suggested Yoga. I took a class but never seemed to be able to really get into it. Fortunately I had summers off. One summer, I decided to volunteer at the Chicago Botanic Garden. That’s when I realized I’d found something wonderful.
I looked forward to driving out there one day a week and either working in the garden or showing people around.
The first year I worked as part of a team in the rose garden. I learned a lot about roses that summer. The Heirloom or Old Garden Roses were all introduced before 1867 and have a wonderful fragrance. But, usually they only bloom once a season. The Modern Roses, which came after, usually bloom continually from summer to the first frost, but they have no fragrance.
When the flowers die, you don’t just cut the dead ones off. You have to cut in just the right place so the plant will grow more buds and continue to have flowers.
It’s important to clean up the dead flowers that have fallen to the ground and other debris. Roses can get infected with various diseases. It’s important to keep them healthy.
It’s also necessary to choose the correct rose for the climate you’re living in. In Illinois and Michigan, we need roses that are winter hardy. That means they can survive the cold and ice and snow and return in the spring ready to bloom again.
Roses need sun and lots of it. So it’s essential to find a place that gets six hours of direct sun a day. It’s even better if it’s morning sun.
I learned many other things about roses that summer. But, most important, every time I started driving out to the Chicago Botanic Garden, I felt myself start to relax. I felt all my tension and stress start to dissolve and float away and realized I was smiling.
Next time I’ll tell you what happened the second summer I volunteered.
Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love. The people I met during a short stopover lived up to the title—friendly and open to sharing their stories. It’s amazing what you can learn in a short city visit if you’re willing to ask and listen.
Chartered Bus Driver
In the morning while taking a bus into the heart of Philadelphia I was the only passenger. This wasn’t a city bus, rather one of the chartered versions that get hired for events, conferences, and groups. Having the bus to myself seemed like an opportunity to chat, which the driver was happy to do. She’d driven for over 16 years, based in different states. I was intrigued. For someone who’s seen much of the country, driving passengers from many different walks of life, I wondered at the stories she could share. So I asked.
“You must have dealt with all kinds of people during your travels?”
She chuckled. She had drug dealers, murderers, and other criminals. One time during a required rest stop, police were waiting with drug sniffing dogs. The animals sniffed out drugs in a bike that was chopped up and stuffed with drugs in the tires and frame. The drug carrier had residue all over him.
When asked if given a choice as a passenger–drug dealer or intoxicated businessperson–which would she want on the bus? Without hesitation, she chose the drug dealer. “He won’t make no trouble. He keeps to himself, not wanting attention.” Made perfect sense.
Cab Drivers
Cabbie 1
One cabbie who took me from the downtown area back to my hotel had much to say about education funding. He felt the burden of ever increasing taxes to support the public schools. He wondered why he should pay for a system, that in his opinion showed no progress or success. When I suggested that some of the corporate entities in the city were most likely paying few taxes, he fiercely defended the tax breaks that corporations like the Philadelphia Eagles and other corporations received because they created jobs. Without those breaks, the corporations might threaten to leave the city, taking their jobs with them, to settle in another city that would be happy to offer the tax break incentives. If he’s correct, it’s an unfortunate vicious cycle. Those with the most income pay less taxes to develop their future employees and entrepreneurs, while the majority with less income carry the heaviest burden. Yet the very person who suffers is willing to pay the burdensome taxes so that corporate CEOs can keep their multimillion dollar bonuses from the tax savings they extract from the city.
Cabbie 2
During the second night, while returning to the hotel, I rode with a cabbie who was at the end of his shift. He was an articulate individual with strong opinions. I found this to be the case with most of the cab drivers during my trip.
His pet peeves were drivers:
Who did not use their turn signal or use it appropriately.
Driving fast in a downpour, causing potential accidents.
Drivers who do not follow the traffic signs.
Slowing down to gawk at accidents rather than drive on by.
I must admit I share his pet peeves.
There was an accident of 3-4 cars on the highway. Police lights everywhere. Looked like the cars had lost control, creating an accident. As traffic merged into his lane, the cabbie would not allow a car to pull in front of him in the lane. He held his lane all the way through.
He held strongly to the idea that professional sports are controlled by the gambling industry. The New England Patriots’ win over the Seattle Seahawks was an example of sports rigging to meet the spread. He rejected the idea that perhaps the final play of the Seahawks offence was just a very bad decision.
Science Leadership Academy
While visiting this school for a professional growth meeting, it was interesting to see what one school sought to achieve. Being summer time, without children around, it’s hard to gauge a school’s progress, yet there were many interesting signs. The teachers spoke of the students fondly as involved in their learning community. The school-wide norms were professional and inclusive of students as partners with the adults for culture building.
Core Values
Inquiry
Research
Collaboration
Presentation
Reflection
It’s refreshing to be in an inner-city school where staff are eager to continue their work with students, and to grow their own capacity to meet needs and challenge students to achieve higher.
Philadelphians are passionate. I hope to return and experience more.
I know you’re wondering why I still believe, when it comes to electronics, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.” I think you’ll understand after you read this.
I like HP products because they’re supposed to be simple, easy to set up and easy to use. To me that says, “This is something I can do on my own.”
When I was at Costco last week, they were having a sale on HP printers. I thought, “This is my lucky day: $60 off a $169 printer. This is for me.” It was an especially good deal because it was actually an “All-In-One”. Besides printing, it could fax, copy and scan. I was going to have state-of-the-art everything!
When I got home, I opened the box and looked at the first few pages in the Quick Start Manual. It was an “Ah Ha” moment. I realized I was in way over my head. But, not to worry, fortunately my husband loves challenges like this.
Michael didn’t even look at the Quick Start Manual. He told me he didn’t need to. Everything was quite simple and he’d have it, “All set up in about half an hour.” Well, half an hour came and went and then an hour and… You get the idea. It was all plugged in and sitting on the counter. It just wasn’t printing!
The next day he phoned Costco. He talked to several people. They were all very nice. He was on the phone with the last man there for over an hour, maybe two. Who’s counting in a situation like this? Nothing would print. Finally the man gave Michael a Case Number and connected him on a special Costco line to HP so we wouldn’t have to pay extra for the advice we were going to get.
There were a number of phone calls. Michael tried this and that. HP sent him to a different person several time. Bottom line, at the end of the next day the printer had yet to print.
Finally, and in defeat, the HP consultant said, “It’s a hardware problem. Take the printer back to Costco and get another one. It’s not working.”
So he returned the printer to Costco, and this time, before he left the store, he insisted on opening the box and trying it out there.
It worked. He brought it home. Plugged it in. Made a few adjustments and it’s just like the saying goes, “Plug and play.”
So, after going through all this, I still believe, when it comes to electronics, “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.”
These days, it’s a bit of both. As a writer, or anyone with a product to promote, social media presents powerful platforms. You can spend more time socializing than writing, so where do you focus your attention?
Pinterest is a social media cut-n-paste website to collect and save online items meaningful to you. Neater than a folder of newspaper clippings from back in the dinosaur days, when you find an image or idea that you want to remember, you “Pin” that image to a “Board” that you create. Presto! Your collection begins.
The anatomy of a Pin is an image, the description and the website link. The image is the specific, intriguing picture from the website. If the site isn’t set up to instantly open Pinterest when you hover over the image, you can manually add the image to your Board with the Pin It button you download from Pinterest and save to your computer’s internet taskbar. The description is whatever you type in as a reminder to you–a cool title, the inspiration for saving it, your impressions–all in 500 words or less.
The website’s link automatically attaches as an electronic sticky note to the “Pinned from” line, and this takes you back to the original post. If you Pin directly from your smartphone, the Pinned from line simply states, “uploaded by user,” thus creating a static image gallery.
Boards group specific topics or themes together, such as: recipes; parenting; DIY crafts; men’s fashions; travel destinations; and home décor. Quotes and infographics are popular, too. If you want to connect with users—or Pinners—who share your interest, search the site by category, keyword or user names. Here’s where the social aspect steps in.
When you discover an image someone else saved, you can Pin that Pinner’s pin to a Board you created, and vice versa. To see a Pinner’s latest discoveries, you “Follow” that person, and then you choose to follow all or just some of their Boards. The most popular Pins, popular by Likes or Pins, come up highest on any search. It’s important to be social to be discovered.
Remember that, “Pinned from”, direct link I mentioned above? This is where the promotion aspect steps in. You want to send people to where the action is, so create Boards that link directly to your blogsite, etsy shop or Amazon page. Create exciting titles and use the description box wisely. Like other social media, use #hashtags to group your pins and to be instantly site-searchable. Type in an additional website link in the description box, and it is an active link, giving you additional promotion tool option.
Who do I like? Who uses Pinterest well? Who inspires me?
Drive traffic back to your own website like blogger Laurel Regan (Alphabet Salad) by grouping her blog posts, most recently for her April 2015 A to Z Blog Challenge posts. I found her through that blog hop, and she inspired me to create my own A to Z blog posts Board.
Intrigue your current and future readers like writer Wendi Knape (Wendijowrites) does by teasing them with images that inspire her writing. One of her stories, Jacob and Charlotte – Meet Cute, features the characters Jacob and Charlotte. Wendi created a Pinterest Board to describe her characters’ “development, clothes, hair, living space [and] favorite foods.” This inspired me to give readers insights into my own writing process through my “Author Inspiration” board.
My use of Pinterest has been a mixture of art and writing. “Scrapbooking and artsy-fartsy stuff” collects mini-album and ephemera ideas to pitch to my editor of Michigan Scrapbooker Magazine for future articles.
My Zentangle boards promote my classes as a Certified Zentangle Teacher (CZT) and artwork that inspires me. Why not let others know what moves me, as well as inspires my works of art?
“Holiday Festivities” gathers spooky ideas and recipes I use to create great visual images for my blog’s annual Halloween post. See how I used the ideas to create party atmosphere in my 2014 Halloween Party blogpost.
“THON-spiration” collects images related to the fight against childhood cancer and The Penn State Dance Marathon (THON); it is currently my most popular board.
As I was typing this post, I created “Books by D.W. Hirsch” Board. In the first 24 hours, I had 24 followers. How cool is that!
I can’t guarantee any success like that, but I can share tips I’ve discovered along this social journey.
Tips to get the most exposure to yourself and your Boards:
Creative titles. Make your Boards sound so exciting that people can’t resist clicking on them.
Maximize the description box. Don’t write wordy paragraphs; space out long sections of sentences. Include hashtags, keywords, and related websites, but use tabs or double-spaces between these words.
Choose the most interesting, active image to Pin if you have multiple options from a website.
Credit the original artist every time you share personal content. Let them know you’ve done that and they may follow you back.
For more ideas, search a general word. Type the word “writing” and you get subcategories of novel; inspiration; prompts; quotes; and more
Some writing-related Board ideas include:
Writers you like and blogs you follow. Be sure to describe why you include them.
Books you like or want to read. This gives people a look into your personal likes, and they may discover a new book to read after seeing your interests.
Share and be social: promote other bloggers or writers by posting their content.
List blog or writing challenges for future exploration.
Promote personal blog posts. Group these sites into related categories and boards.
Share other media images like screenshots of your Twitter posts. Be mindful of others’ privacy.
Favorite quotes
Pinterest works best for people who actively wander around the Internet. Creating a Board or Pinning an item can take as little as 3 minutes, but this may be an awkward medium for some. It takes time to ensure the correct link, to write an appropriate description, and then roam around Pinterest looking for people to connect and share interests.
What site platform works best for you? Are you still discovering? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
