First Flight
Welcome to Blue Heron Books, located in historic High Falls,* New York, across the street from and next door to three of our favorite shops: The Green Cottage, Ollie’s Pizza, and Fool for Love Vintage Clothing and Goods. I’ll be posting in this space once a week to touch base with our subscribers and readers, about new books I’m looking forward to reading, old and old(er) books I love and why, and just general thoughts on thinking, reading, and writing, as values and practices, BHB is interested in promoting.
Why Blue Heron?
In 2015, I lost two intellectual mentors—in April, my mother died. She had never gone to college, but she read widely and deeply, (Shakespeare, the Greeks, science, mysteries, and science fiction) and instilled the importance and pleasure of that reading practice in me. This was her gift to me, as well as role-modelling original and free, some might say, radical, thinking. My mother was one of the first authors of gay Star Trek stories or slash zines. Her bedroom became her Star Chamber and writing room. I collected and organized The Alice J. Mills Papers, which now reside in Bowling Green State University’s Popular Culture Library and Special Collections. In May of that year, I lost Jane Marcus, my mentor and friend with whom I studied Virginia Woolf, Jane Ellen Harrison, intellectual history, peace movements, and women writers of the 1920’s and 1930’s, en route to my doctorate in English Literature. Jane was a pioneering Virginia Woolf scholar, feminist theorist and literary critic, a brilliant mind and like my mother, an original and free, some might say, radical thinker. After her death, I helped edit and organize her unfinished manuscript, published in 2021 Nancy Cunard: Perfect Stranger. I also organized and delivered The Jane Marcus Papers, which are now housed at my alma mater, Mount Holyoke College. My mother and Jane were both fiery, passionate women, impatient with injustice.
Let’s just say, that once they passed away, a few short hours after their respective memorials, I began to see blue herons…like… everywhere. And, in the most unlikely places (once on top of our chicken coop!). Now, I know that blue herons are around these parts, lowlands, riverbeds, marshes, freshwater, saltwater, the brackish mezzo regions! And, surely, we all seek solace and signs in nature, especially after experiencing loss, but I decided to pay attention to it, take it in, and go with it. I looked up the mythological significance of the blue heron: perseverance, determination, good fortune, prosperity. Who could argue with that? Other than the fact that many of these words are synonyms ☺ But I also saw these sightings as extenuations of my conversations with both my mother and with Jane. And in one of these, if-you-could-have-dinner-with-two-authors-living-or-dead-who-would-it-be moments, we all decided that Blue Heron Books would make a great name for a bookstore.
A Friends and Family Affair
These were all just thoughts, musings, abstract ideas that I frequently dwell in (or try to!) but once I shared these thoughts with my wife and partner, Martha, another original and free thinker as well and one of the most supportive and generous people I know, I knew that with her love and support, together we would make it real. She enlisted the help of her children: Harrison, a carpenter and fine woodworker, built the beautiful shelves and sales counter, and installed the vintage Putnam library ladder, generously gifted to us by our friends, Lance and Ivy Lappin, of Lance Lappin hair salon in Tribeca; Audry kept us on point with our sign design and our graphic novels and comics collection; and Max, a fine art photographer and filmmaker, was on tap to help us with photography, once we got up and running. Malia and little Ray always bring the inspo and love, and so many friends (I see you Renee Elizabeth and Mary Evelyn) and extended family members (Abby, Kate, Erica, Scott, Todd, Leslie, Christian, Henry, Carley, Scott, Sue, Judy, David, Stephanie, Ron, and Andy,) who all chimed in with book recommendations, guidance, and overall upps. And to Sascha, for helping me move shelves and boxes of books before he went off to college, thanks Sascha! Thanks to all of you who pitched in in big and small ways to help us realize our dream.
In the Reads: Shelf Life
This week I’m going to highlight a few titles for different reasons. First, the new(ish) (2022), Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin for the quality of its writing, and what it says about friendship, intimacy, and art.
And, because the title of Zevin’s book invokes, or reminded me, anyway, of Macbeth’s famous line from Shakespeare “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day… ,” I wanted to point to a Macbeth re-telling some of you may have missed, Susan Fraser King’s Lady Macbeth (2008), set in Celtic Scotland and which reimagines Shakespeare’s famous villainess, Lady Macbeth, as Queen Gruadt, a savvy, courageous woman, surrounded by political in-fighting and conspiracies (sound familiar?). Or, you can also just read (or re-read) Macbeth. I recommend both.
Thirdly, I want to give the biggest shout out to local author and friend of BHB, Gideon Sterer, and his brand-new children’s book, I Will Read to You (2023) (illustrated by Charles Santoso). He is the author of several children’s books, including The Midnight Fair (2021), The Christmas Owl (2021), and It Began with Lemonade (2021), among many other titles. We are so excited to be hosting Gideon (in our first event ever!), who will be joining us on September 22nd to read from I Will Read to You. Check our calendar of events for details and updates.
Read on,
Jean
*High Falls has so many points of contact with literature and culture, that give it its unique brand of street cred: for example, um, Marc Chagall painted here! Elia Kazan directed a young Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in Splendour in the Grass. If you haven’t seen it, check it out; and just to end on a literary note, the film’s title, of course, is from Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” also, worth checking out, before you…check out, i.e., read, browse, perhaps, buy…a book ☺