Lucy Mercer's Open Salon Blog

My favorite song

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 23:03:29 -0400

What better way to spend a Saturday night than to share favorite songs with my Open Salon friends? It has taken a completely frivolous open call like this to get me to actually post. Here, on the eve of April Fool's Day, it's about time I posted in 2012.

I have a short list of songs that make my "favorite song" cut, and the criteria are that I must love the lyrics and be able to sing them in my unremarkable voice without stirring the neighborhood dogs. The songs that come to mind are classics, another way of saying that I'm hopelessly old-fashioned and out of style.

And so they are: my first runner-up "Moon River," for sentimental reasons, including especially that Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics (officially unrelated, but you never know who'll come knocking at the door someday). Easy to sing, gentle lyrics that make a sweet lullaby for a babe in arms.

"You Don't Know Me" written by Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold in 1955 is the most perfectly written song that I can thing of and that's why it's my number one. Countless singers have covered this song in the intervening years - this NYT obit for Walker lists versions by Elvis, Patti Page, Roy Orbison, Emmylous Harris and Kenny Rogers, alongside the straightforward interpretation by Arnold in 1956 and Ray Charles' 1962 recording on "Modern Sounds in Country + Western Music." Canadian wedding singer Michael Buble (and I write that with affection), has a respectable version, as well.

I guess because of my Nashville roots, I keep going back to the country versions by Arnold and Brother Ray. Both are worth a listen, but this jazzy rendition is a gem: Norah Jones and Wynton Marsalis:

http://youtu.be/T2_9Rkk4f_g

My seond runner-up, incidentally, is "Amazing Grace," for provenance (the oft-told tale of the slave trader John Newton who wrote the hymn) and scores of stirring versions. Favorite takes include those by soprano (and Georgia native) Jessye Norman, and jazz great Diane Schuur. To be honest, though, message aside, I include it because my daughter occasionally asks me to sing it at bedtime. I know all the verses by heart and they speak to me of the sorrows of this life and the promise of a better tomorrow, if not in this world, then beyond.

Celebrating my independents

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:12:07 -0500

Box of books by Lucy Mercer.

I’ve loved bookstores since I was a little girl, so it's no wonder I would grow up to work in both independent and chain bookstores. The small town in upstate South Carolina where I grew up had a Carnegie library, but not a bookstore; we drove to the next county to visit Pic-a-Book ,the store where I purchased my Nancy Drew mysteries, the ones with the Titian-haired (and sometimes blonde) sleuth on the cover, hunched behind a corner, flashlight in hand. I bought my first cookbook at Pic-a-Book, a paperback copy of "The Winnie-the-Pooh Cookbook." My mother allowed me to make quiche-like Cottleston pie from the book, even buying the frozen pie crust to put the egg and ham filling in.

Mom saved my books, giving them to me when my girls were born – brittle, brown Dell Yearling copies including Michael Bond’s Paddington Bear, and other favorite childhood books, "From Anna" by Jean Little, "Her Majesty Grace Jones" by Jane Langton, "Summer of the Swans" by Betsy Byars (a fellow South Carolinian).

Traveling on our annual summer vacations, we would inevitably find bookstores to visit, particularly in my grandparent's hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is home to many publishing houses, and the largest book distributor, Ingram Book Company (well, really Ingram is in Larvergne, just south of town, but close enough). My copy of “From Anna” came from the Baptist Bookstore there. How on earth I can remember where I bought a book 40 years ago, still feel the bare linoleum floors because the book was on the bottom shelf, how can I remember that and still be fuzzy about the moment my second child took her first steps? It’s cemented into the folds of my brain. When I’m an old lady, I will wear purple and recount the bookstores of my childhood.

I return to Nashville every few years, driving my mom around the town she grew up in. We visit the Frist Museum, and we drive through the Brentwood she used to know when it was farms and not business parks. And we inevitably hit a few bookstores. There was a nice Borders in Brentwood, now gone. And there was Davis-Kidd, gone this year as well. We travel south of town to Franklin, one of the sweetest little towns on earth, and home to a charming indie bookstore, maybe someone can help me with the name. I purchased a copy of a Jeanne Ray hardcover there. (Jeanne Ray’s “Romeo & Julie” is a funny mid-life romance, kind of in the Mary Kay Andrews vein. Ray is also the mother of NYT best-selling author and Nashville resident Ann Patchett, who will open her own independent bookstore in Nashville soon.)

Further south of Nashville, in Chattanooga, is a warehouse of books, McKay Books. It is a used-book emporium, a Sam’s Club-sized warehouse chock-full of books. It is probably the most organized used bookstore I have ever been in. Books are arranged neatly on the shelves according to category. I will add that it smells ok in there – if you frequent used bookstores, you know what I mean. None of that sharp scent of must, dust and mildew that leaves me searching through my purse for tissues.

Near Atlanta, I can mention the bookstores that used to be –the old Oxford Books, a grand old lady in a brownstone on Peachtree Street. Well, there were many incarnations of Oxford, including the one that sank the chain, a remodeled car dealership on Pharr Road. There, I attended a dual book signing with National Book Award finalist Bob Shacochis and Southern cookbook author Nathalie Dupree, who had more in common than one might originally think, at least in the realm of food and storytelling.

I met local authoring hero Pat Conroy there, signing “Beach Music”and Terry Kay, a Georgia author mostly known for the beloved “To Dance with the White Dog.”

Probably my best Oxford Books memory is the signing for“Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil” with author John Berendt and the Lady Chablis. While waiting in the line, I began talking with the well-dressed woman next to me. She was about 40 and blonde and seemed to know a lot about The Book (as Savannahians calls it). As it turns out, she was Joe Odom’s ex-wife. If you know the book, Joe is the piano-playing lawyer and tour guide, a bit of a con man, and most certainly a rapscallion. The ex-Mrs. Odom was mentioned briefly in the book, and she signed my copy on the page. That particular edition is not a first, but it’s my best association copy – Chablis, Berendt and Joe Odom’s ex-wife. Berendt is a low-key fellow and Chablis is not – she was absolutely gorgeous and when my turn came to have my book signed, I complimented something about her, I truly do not remember what, and she told me she liked my brooch. How cool is that?

The Old New York Bookshop in Midtown Atlanta was something of a hangout for local authors – the friends of the owner were given hand-crafted pottery coffee mugs with their names – they were kept on shelves and windows throughout the store, a small cottage which I’m pretty sure is no longer there.

Books and the bookstores they come from are intertwined. And in some cases, the bookseller and the book are intertwined. Do I really know or care where the can of soup on my pantry shelf comes from? Or the shoes in my closet (for the record, no Manolos, no Jimmy Choos. Maybe if fashion footwear was my weakness and fetish, I would feel differently)?

This is what sticks in my craw about the e-reading age - the impersonalization of acquiring books. It used to be a dance, a flirtation, a journey, an adventure, a treasure hunt. You had to ask the right questions, go to the right place, pay the right price. It’s all point-click-pay now, with all the pre-packaged adventure of a Harlequin romance. It’s a zipless world, resigning readers to the tried-and-true, the sure thing, the one book you’ve got to read because the machine tells you to.

A final story on bookselling, then I’ll let you be. This one has to do with a time when I was buying a book. One morning after I dropped my daughter off at preschool, I noticed an estate sale at one of those retirement communities populated with elderly residents living in duplexes. As weak as I am around bookstores, I'm just as bad when I see an estate sale sign. I pulled in and walked through the house of the woman who had recently passed away. She had once been a lady lawyer in town, and the apartment was filled with barrister bookcases, notable antiques, and lots of hardcover books. I noticed the excellent condition of the books right away – when you sort through used books for a living, you notice things like that. It's like bank tellers spotting a counterfeit Franklin note.

I filled my arms with a stack of a dozen books and sat in a soon-to-be sold armchair for a look-see. I opened the first, a novel by the North Carolina author Kaye Gibbons, and noticed that the owner signed the flyleaf with her full name “Margaret…..” and that I had known her. I looked through the remaining books, all by local and Southern authors. Lewis Grizzard, Terry Kay, a few others, some signed by the author, all signed by the owner. I realized right away that I had sold most of these books to Margaret.

I couldn't let those books go to another home, so I bought them all. I had sold them to my customer and then I bought them back. It's the circle of life.

When I pass, will my girls look around my house and say, well, we can get everything we want to read on Kindle, let’s just pack these up and give them to Goodwill? Or will they greet guests at the door, tell them to look through the books and take a few that they will like? I hope the latter.

Honoring a fallen hero

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:10:58 -0400

Photo by Lucy Mercer

This story isn't about food or books, but just a glimpse into the town and times I live in. I brought my camera along yesterday as our county honored a fallen hero.

My small town was covered up in the American flag Thursday. It was not the 4^th of July, not Labor Day, Memorial Day or Veterans Day, or any of the traditional days when there might be a parade downtown and folks young and old wave Old Glory. This was a parade of a kind, but a somber occasion - a young Marine from my hometown was killed in Afghanistan last week and his body was brought home. The motorcade from the airport to the funeral home made its way through the heart of the county, the roads lined on either side with businessmen and women, children, veterans, retirees, schoolchildren.

The Marine is Lance Corporal Scott D. Harper, nicknamed Boots, and he was 21 years old. On my way to downtown, I drove along the same route as the motorcade and watched the power company place a flag over the highway. I took this picture from inside my car:

Photo by Lucy Mercer

According to the obituary in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Harper was everyone’s friend in high school, played four years on the golf team, and he really liked boots. His last phone conversation with his dad involved sending a new pair of boots to him in Afghanistan. Along the motorcade route, men placed boots on their truck to honor him.

Photo by Lucy Mercer.

The school where Harper spent his first grade year was along the route and the schoolchildren lined up to watch the motorcade. In the city, volunteers handed out flags and office workers came out to watch. The motorcade began with a dozen officers on motorcycles, and another dozen vehicles, blue lights flashing, representing local law enforcement. Then there was the hearse and the cars with the family members, some of whom looked out the car windows, as amazed as we were that so many citizens came out on a cold autumn day to honor this young man.

Motorcade along Church Street. Photo by Lucy Mercer.

Behind the hearse were at least 100 motorcycles representing the Patriot Guard Riders who protect the family members (with the permission of the family) from protesting groups such as Westboro Baptist of Kansas. Westboro was not present for the motorcade, but has stated on its website that it will protest at the funeral on Sunday. The Patriot Guard and our sheriff have vowed to keep them away from the family and funeral.

Patriot Guard Riders. Lucy Mercer

Like everyone else who watched the motorcade, waving flags and wiping tears, my thoughts and prayers are with this young man’s family and friends. They are grieving the loss of a son, a grandson, a brother, a friend. I don’t know the family directly, other than names that are familiar from living in the same town that I graduated high school. I do know that it was important to me and to my community to come together to remember this young man and to let his family know how thankful we are for his service.

Boy with flag. Lucy Mercer

Flags on the square. Lucy Mercer.

Denouement for a bookseller

Thu, 8 Sep 2011 22:09:10 -0400

Borders press pass lanyard and earpiece. Lucy Mercer

This weekend, I’ll pull my last shift as a bookseller, and if God is with me, my last retail shift ever. My Borders store hasn’t flatlined yet, but it’s just a matter of days, and I’ve decided to hang up my lanyard and radio earpiece early. I'm worn out and worn down by the customers, most of whom are bewildered and bitchy while picking apart the store. "When is your last day?" they ask. "When are the next discounts?" "Can you hold this for me?" "Do you have 'The Help?'"

Borders #376. Lucy Mercer

I’ve worked at store #376 for nearly three years and the Angel of Death has hovered over the store the entire time. Outsiders have an “84 Charing Cross Road” idea of booksellers, that we read on the job and hold forth on Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky if ever given the chance. Well, the truth is, during my tenure, reading on the job at Borders was considered stealing from the company. And most folks wouldn’t know Tolstoy if he walked up and introduced himself. The job was mostly about getting product on the floor and getting customers to the product they needed, and in some cases, didn't know they wanted. Along the way, there were titles we were told to push in order for the company to get some slack from the publishers, and within the past year a rewards program that was a good value for the early subscribers, but not so for the last to sign up. People will say that the Kindle killed Borders. The truth is more complex than that - overexpansion during the height of the real estate market; five CEOs in five years, none of whom had bookstore experience; a corporate culture of waste. I could go on, but what's the point? Maybe someday, someone will write an e-book about what went wrong at Borders.

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Shakespeare was here two weeks ago. Now it's fixtures awaiting pick-up. Lucy Mercer

ï»¿ I'll miss many things about my job. My colleagues, who put the "q" in quirky. Some are long-term friends, from a previous independent bookselling gig, and some will continue to be my buddies. We get each other's jokes, something that has to do with not wincing when a customer asks for "Withering Heights" or mispronounces Albert Camus. I'll miss, too, the privilege of being around so much reading material. While reading on the clock was frowned on, reading on your lunch break was considered a right and the greatest perk of the job. I'd grab the latest magazines and newest cookbooks to peruse on my lunch hour. My friends and I would huddle around the table in the dingy breakroom, feeding our reading habits and ourselves.

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Childcare/Psychology/Self-Improvement. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I’ll miss the regulars, the pre-liquidation customers. I'll miss the precious bookselling moments where you sell a preteen her copy of “Are you there, God, it’s me, Margaret?” or a new mom “The Velveteen Rabbit” or a newly pregnant woman “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” Bookstores are for ages and stages and now the experts tell us that the new age demands books via byte. I don’t buy it. I think there will always be a market for tangible, dust-gathering books made of real, tangible, forest-clearing paper. Gutenberg had a good thing going. We hope that a chain like Books-a-Million will find our suburban county and realize what a great location it is for a bookstore.

In 2006, a few years before he passed, John Updike addressed the BookExpo convention in Washington, D.C. His speech focused on Google’s plan to digitize books and how that would influence the writer; it ended with a call to arms for booksellers.

The full text of Updike's speech can be found here, but my favorite part is near the end: “Books traditionally have edges: some are rough-cut, some are smooth-cut, and a few, at least at my extravagant publishing house, are even top-stained. In the electronic anthill, where are the edges? The book revolution, which, from the Renaissance on, taught men and women to cherish and cultivate their individuality, threatens to end in a sparkling cloud of snippets.

"So, booksellers, defend your lonely forts. Keep your edges dry. Your edges are our edges. For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity.”

Now it seems the revolution has passed us by and there are fewer forts to defend. And I’m not sure what hurts more – my feet or my heart.

A bread and butter note for Francis Lam

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:04:46 -0400

Dear Francis,

I'm sure by now you've vacated your corner cubicle at Salon, but I just wanted to send a note to let you know how much the Salon Kitchen Challenge has meant to me over the past 15 months.

I came to Salon looking for Ruth Reichl and her quiver of writers, following the shuttering of Gourmet in Fall 2009. When I read about the Kitchen Challenge, I knew that I should at least try to form sentences around these ideas I had about food. It took me two weeks to get up the courage to submit an article, but when I did, you wrote something nice about it on Salon. I submitted a story the next week, and heavens to Murgatroyd, my story about breakfast with my 4 year old won! From that moment on, I was hooked, and my 2010 routine was set: Monday night, get assignment; plan, shop, cook and photograph by Friday; write like a madwoman Saturday; post on Sunday.

As the year progressed, I made friends with the other SKC regulars - Linda Shiue, Grace Hwang Lynch, Paul Hinrichs, Mamie Chen (still miss her!), Felicia Lee, Lisa Kuebler, Fusun Atalay, Theresa Rice, Bellwether Vance, and many others. Some time in June, Linda and I realized that we both submitted stories each week and we both planned to finish out the year. One year, 50 contests, and by the end of December, we high-fived via Open Salon private messaging. Along the way, we wrote about peas, peaches, pumpkins, cookies, cocktails and candy, among others. Nearly each week, you wrote something nice about my stories, and I would walk on air for a day, before diving into the next story, because, as any daily newspaper reporter can tell you, you're only as good as what you have for the next deadline.

More than a year later, I have a blog-full of timely and seasonal stories, and a group of friends who share the same goal - writing about food and the ways it touches our lives, fills our bellies and expands our souls.We're branching out beyond the borders of Open Salon, finding new avenues for our work.

All this is a roundabout way of saying "thank you," Francis, for reading my stories and being so encouraging throughout the Salon Kitchen Challenge. I also enjoyed your stories, tutorials and Sacrificial Lam posts. I learned so much about cooking and writing just by reading your stories. Even though you're moving on, I want to join the chorus saying please keep writing your sweet and snarky stories.

A popular complimentary close these days is "best," and I truly wish you the best in your new venture,

Lucy