McHuston Booksellers

Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Tag: broken arrow bookstores (Page 95 of 114)

Out of surgery…

May 4, 2013 /

Since I made such a fuss about taking a sharp blade to the old book, I thought it might warrant an update. It isn’t completely finished, but the major work is done, and the patient appears to be headed for a complete recovery.

A lot of the rebinding jobs require a little destruction before the repair can begin, and this book was no exception. For me – particularly if I am not the book’s owner – that part is nerve-racking. The idea of cutting the covers from a book is distressing, even if I know they’ll be back on soon enough. (If you missed the earlier episode, here is a link to the image and article when the boards were removed.)

I get anxious about altering a volume, too.

One book was so out of whack that it required putting a new edge on the pages. It also cleans up the discoloration that happens to the visible paper edge over time. But to put a book under the guillotine constitutes an action that can’t be reversed. This old book would have benefited from trim, but will retain its antique look better with the discolored paper offsetting the new leather and marbled paper binding.

At any rate, the image shows the facelift.

There are no binding supply stores in the area, at least none that I am aware of – so I have to get the things I need from the internet. Marbled paper is an art form, and each sheet is created individually by gently placing the paper on a layer of paint that has been floated on a pan of water. The designs are created by using coordinated colors which are swirled with a small tool or pin, or simply dripped or gently poured onto the water surface. (Paint floats.)

At one time I found an artist in the US that was making paper and selling it on the internet, but the large sheet from which this was taken came from Israel. Another sheet came from a paper artist in Germany. I’m not buying overseas to be exotic, I just find one that I like and then contact the seller.

Attaching a finishing page to the interior of the boards will complete the project, and have this little one-owner back on the road for another century or so.

There are plenty of books here that don’t need repairs, so come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main Street, Broken Arrow OK

Panning planning.

May 2, 2013 /

A two-hour drive for a Hideaway’s Pizza? Crazy, maybe. To be sure, it wasn’t planned. I’m one of those who sometimes acts on a whim rather than thinking it over. The drive was back in the day when Stillwater had the only location, and I was recalling fond memories of it to the passenger in my car.

Me: We really ought to go get one.

Passenger: Okay.

Me: How ‘bout them Cowboys?

So, we hit the highway and drove and drove. It was a time of conversations between friends about important things – because everything seemed important, or at least magnified in intensity and perceived with a flourish.

The pizza? It was good. We knew it would be. Even if it had been bad it would have been good, for all the effort put into sitting down in that little restaurant and having it presented to us.

Some of my capricious decisions haven’t turned out so well. It hasn’t stopped me from acting on little-considered ideas.

Planning is part of the fun, I’ve been told numerous times. A variety of responses have always popped out of my mouth to that one.

Planner: You know planning is half the fun.

Me: Sure. It doubles the disappointment when the plan falls through.

Planner: You just have to make an alternate plan, just in case.

Me: A plan for a failed plan?

Planner: Right.

Looking ahead with anticipation is one thing, but I’m better known for stopping (while admittedly lost) to find a road map that will explain which highway is the one we should have turned on forty-five minutes ago.

The cliché is something like this (always abbreviated, and trailing off in a near-whisper while looking at someone’s failed endeavor): The best-laid plans…

The rest of it, usually omitted because we don’t know what the heck it is supposed to imply, goes like this in another abbreviated form: The best-laid plans of mice and men…

Scottish poet Robert Burns is credited with the saying, which concludes: The best-laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Besides his writing, Robbie Burns also kept a garden and once plowed through a nest of mice while tilling. He figured the mouse probably assumed it was a safe spot to build a nest, but – as he noted – plans often go astray.

Which brings me to my point.

Early last week, when emails were being exchanged among the Rose District merchants about First Thursday plans (the night we all keep our businesses open later), it was noted that the day’s forecast included a high of 82-degrees, sunny skies, and balmy breezes. A perfect evening for outdoor strolling, shopping, and listening to the outdoor concert by the band hired especially for the event.

The emails solicited replies from other store owners about their own plans.

Ahhh. There’s that planning thing again, the virtue I’ve been accused of not possessing in the least. In truth, I didn’t have an etched-in-stone event. Playing it by ear – that’s me.

Sunny skies? Ahhh, no. High of 82-degrees? That was yesterday. Strolling and listening to the outdoor music? Jogging in place might be the better idea, in order to keep from freezing up.

As I sit here typing, the day’s high has likely come and gone. Temperatures are expected to fall into the low forties by late afternoon. Sunshine? No. They’ve changed that plan to a possibility of freezing rain or snow. Snow!

We may see some record low temperatures by tomorrow morning, but snow in May in Tulsa County?

I’m not planning on it. So, come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District: 122 South Main Street
Broken Arrow, OK!

Book’em Danno.

April 19, 2013 /

Books have been written about plots and counterplots, conspiracies, and terrorist attacks. I have shelves lined with them. Books have been written, both factual and those built from the imaginations of their authors.

Whether the young men accused in the Boston Marathon bombing are guilty of executing that event, or not, is a matter for the courts, at least for the surviving brother. Without question, they have already been tried in some corners of the media. Other corners will assume them innocent on grounds that authority figures will resort to any measures to bring about a conclusion, including fabricating evidence to support charges.

What cannot be denied is this: we are living in a world consumed with immediacy, social connectivity, and the capability for relentless recording and dissemination of video.

Whether we agree with the practice or not, we – as citizens – have events of our daily lives recorded with remarkable regularity. Look up at a traffic-lighted intersection. Chances are, there is a camera in place, the focus set on your vehicle and recording your activities at that moment.

Moments later, your actions will be caught by another camera at another intersection. And it isn’t just traffic. Store owners and those who have been victimized in particular, are increasingly adding cameras to their electronic loop of security protection. Admittedly, there are areas that cannot rationalize the cost of cameras versus the relative low crime risk. What it amounts to is this: you may be able to run red lights with reckless abandon in rural America without risk of being recorded and/or prosecuted for the violations. (It’s also a lot less risky to run a red light in rural America.)

The idea that a terrorist crime could be committed in a major metropolitan area without some camera being in the vicinity is almost far-fetched. A relative in Chechnya was quoted as saying the accusations against his sons for the Boston explosions amounted to science fiction. It remains to be seen whether those sons are the ones responsible for the bombings, but it would be science fiction to believe (in our current state of technology) that activities at major public events could escape being captured by video.

Not just a random camera.

Look at Facebook. Pictures. Videos. Public. Private. Shameless and shameful. It is proof without question that the lives of the public in general are being recorded from almost every angle imaginable. All day. All night.

There are corners of the world that don’t have the same reverence and respect, adulation, envy, and accumulated indebtedness owing to the world of the cellphone. The US is not among them.

Whatever we may believe about privacy and our own lives, we should have – by now – learned that someone is taking our picture right now either for something we are doing, or something someone is doing nearby. We may only be in the background, but there we are, ready for computer enhancement and identification. Tagging, Facebook calls it.

Even as those who disagree with the technology will complain, they will also have to admit that there is some small measure of reassurance that the risk of being recorded may give pause to some who might consider conducting attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing.

On one hand, it is remarkable that within the course of a business week, an anonymous assault can result in the identification and arrest of a suspect. On the other, it is almost astonishing that anyone in the techno-savvy part of the world could believe it possible to slink away into the shadows without being captured – with authorities completing what was begun by the cameras.

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