Book Deals

... just about everything today has to do with books. Except, of course, the chainsaw, which I retrieved during lunch. The cover had snapped, which meant the chain kept coming loose. It's the sort of thing that can cause an excessive amount of excitement, so I had it fixed. Plus, it's getting colder by the day, and we can use the wood. Snow flurries the last two mornings, and the leaves are pretty much history.

One of the ducks was attacked a few weeks ago by the turkeys (and the chickens piled on), so I had it in a crate next to the coop. I thought they'd pecked its eyes out, but turned out it was just blood that had crusted over. So when it made its great escape from the crate this morning -- God knows how -- Lisa put it and four small ducklings into the chicken run. Which sent the boy ducks into a fighting tizzy and made the collies go absolutely beserk, but things seem to have calmed down now. Got 11 eggs, which seems to be par for the course these days.

So, books. I'm dealing with three (and possibly four) publishers for books on various and sundry subjects. I need to break down and just hire an agent. I'm beginning to see why some people feel the need to hand over 10 percent of their advances, or whatever it is that agents get these days. I'll resist the temptation another month or so ... maybe.

Anyway. I've vented. I feel better.

But while going through the loft, I found a book that contains the following passages. Guess when this was written:

"In so far as summer residents occupy productive land, take it out of use and let it revert to brush, they are a detriment to the agriculture of the state. Certainly this is true in the more productive valleys.

"Another thing the summer residents do to Vermont agriculture is to put a premium on factory goods and specialties shipped in from out of state, have them carried in the stores and thus help to persuade Vermont residents that it is easier and cheaper to get dollars, exchange them for canned goods sold in the stores, and abandon long-established gardens in the course of the turnover. Thus the state is made less dependent upon its own agriculture and more dependent on dollars, many of which will be used to buy out-of-state produce.

"If this process goes far enough, Vermont will develop a suburban or vacationland economy, built on the dollars of those who make thier income elsewhere and spend part of it during a few weeks or months of the Vermont summer. Such an exonomy is predominantly parasitic in terms of production, although income and expense accounts may be in balance. Carried to its logical conclusion, it would make Vermonters sell their labor power to summer residents, mowing their lawns and doing their laundry, thus greatly reducing their own economic self-dependence. Such an economy may attract more cheap dollars to the state, but it will hardly produce self-reliant men.

"Summer people do more than upset Vermont's economy. By living on their places during the summer and closing them for the balance of the year, they turn sections of the State into ghost towns. Neighborhoods, to be meaningful, must have continuity. Part-time towns are parasitic dead towns."

The above was written in 19-'effin-54, in The Good Life. I can't say I agree with an enormous portion of the Nearings' experiment -- the rants against putting animals into bondage are just a bit much, and there seems to be quite a bit too much holier-than-thou-ness going on -- but give them huge props for prescience.

Finally, a really wonderful start on the Ryan Shay tragedy from the NY Times:

November 8, 2007
Small Town Mourns a Running Marvel
By JERÉ LONGMAN and AIMEE BERG

CENTRAL LAKE, Mich., Nov. 7 — It snowed the night they brought Ryan Shay home to bury him. Three hundred candles in paper bags lined the inner lane of the high school track. The wind extinguished some candles and ignited several bags into balls of flame.

“A kid from a village of 1,000 makes it big, that’s a million-to-one shot,” Quinn Barry, the athletic director at Central Lake High, said as he patiently relit candles, maintaining his frozen vigil. “But Ryan always had a plan.”

This was Tuesday. On Sunday, 150 people had come to walk or run in tribute to Shay, who died a day earlier at the Olympic men’s marathon trials in New York of causes still undetermined. Now there was a lone, thin runner circling the track in tribute, wearing a skullcap and tights, only his footsteps announcing him in the dark football stadium.

Two cars drove up near the track, one leaving its headlights on. A mother and her son’s wife climbed out and hugged several friends in this woeful homecoming.

“The most beautiful thing I’ve seen,” said Susan Shay, Ryan’s mother. “Everyone has been so supportive.”

Beautiful lead, but the story lost me here:

Much remains unknown. Autopsy and toxicology reports have yet to be completed. Given the tarnished nature of running, where doping has been widespread, Shay’s father has asked that the toxicology report be made public so that it might absolve any suspicion that Ryan used illicit substances. The New York medical examiner’s office declined to say what specific substances would be screened.

Marathon doping? Um, excuse me? I'm sure there are some asshats out there who are doing it for marathons, but I always thought drugs were good for short bursts of energy, not for hours of entertainment. Of course, shows what I know. But I just keep thinking, Please, God, no more Rosie Ruiz, and please don't let this sport turn into professional cycling.

So, the plan for tomorrow: Run. Cut wood. Work. Rest. Enjoy.