A
library for the price of a book.
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Table of Contents
Writing Tips
Book Collections on CD and DVDWeb Notes by Richard Seltzer
Kindle NewsBook Reviews
Fuzzy Thinking about Big QuestionsYou need a large pool of willing strangers who care about stories and words and have incentive to read yours. That’s what Zoetrope http://www.zoetrope.com provides for free.
The web site was started/inspired by Francis Ford Coppola in 1998 and is associated with the magazine Zoetrope: All Story. There are separate workshop areas for short stories, Screenplays, novellas, short scripts, poetry, and flash (very short) fiction, each of which has its own rules. for example, in Short Stories, you have to read and review five stories for every story of your own that you post for comment. The best stories (based on member reviews) are considered for publication in the magazine; and there are a variety of other forms of recognition, displayed in the Hall of Fame. (By the way, many of the stories I’ve read at Zoetrope are excellent — a pleasure, rather than a chore to read and comment on).
In addition to Writing, there are also “buildings” for art/design, Music, Acting, and Directing. You can set up a “private office” where you can post files and carry on discussions, trying to network with other invited participants. And there’s also a site-specific email system.
FYI — according to Wikipedia “A zoetrope is a device that produces an
illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term
zoetrope is from the Greek words zoe, ‘life’ and trope, ‘turn’. It may
be taken to mean ‘wheel of life’ or ‘living wheel.’”
This DVD consists of the full contents of our American Literature 2-CD
set, plus US History. It also includes (without double-counting) CDs in
which those same books are organized in different ways, to create interesting
and useful contexts:
* American Revolution
* Civil War
* Papers of the Presidents
* George Washington
* Thomas Jefferson
* Abraham Lincoln
* Theodore Roosevelt
* California
* Old New England
* Old New York
* The Old South
* Old Mid-West
* Southwest
* West
* Black Americans
* Slave Narratives and Autobiographies
* Native Americans
* Brook Farm
In other words you get the equivalent of 21 CDs on this one DVD.
All-British DVD, added 1525 books, for a total of 5,137. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/dvdbrit.html
World Literature in English CD, added 944 books for a total of 1555. “World Literature” means books which were originally published in languages other than English. This CD contains only books in English translation (all of which appear on our World Literature 2-CD set, which also includes texts in the original language). http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/woliineni7.html
Philosophy CD, added 21 books, for a total of 221. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/philosophy.html
In additional to the usual plain text (.txt) files, this CD also includes
multi-book .doc (Word) files, with internal links for the works of Plato,
Nietzsche, William James, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Spinoza, as well as Thomas
Aquinas’ Summa Theologica and Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed. (To
use those .doc files on your Kindle, you could open them in Word, save
them as .html, then open them in MobiPocket Reader which will convert them
to .prc; then move those .prc files to your Kindle over the USB cable.
Those same multi-book files are also available from us through the Kindle
Store for 99 cents each.
Also, the ability to put links inside book and book-collection files has interesting implications for schools and home schooling. For now, I’m just using it for the overall index on a CD and for internal links that are simply an “active table of contents.” But once you put a copy on your hard drive, you can make your own creative additions. For instance, teachers could easily (with Word) add links from one passage to another within the same file or to a particular passage in another book file — to highlight text to be compared/contrasted or even as part of a daily assignment. They could even ask students to do such linking (in addition to using search and copy/paste to assemble collections of quotes and excerpts) as a form of commentary on a book or set of books.
The individual books here gathered on these CDs .doc files all appear separately in .txt form on our other CDs and DVDs. So while you would find all those books on our Complete Book DVD set with 20,884 books, you would not find these multi-book doc/.rtf files there. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/dvdcomplete.html
NB — These CDs are not recommended for the blind, who typically find our plain text (.txt) files work better with their screen readers and other devices.
American Authors has 611 books grouped as 66 files — works by American authors, regardless of the subject matter (fiction, non-fiction, religion and children’s books). Here I have added works of Laura Lee Hope (Bobbsey Twins), Mary Baker Eddy, Anna Katharine Green, O. Henry, William Dean Howells, Grace Richmond, Jonathan Edwards, Ellen White, Albert Payson Terhune, Charles Spurpeon, Margaret Sidney, Ernest Thompson Seton, John Kendrick Bangs, Emily Dickinson, Mary Mapes Dodge, Theodore Drieser, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln, eleanor Porter, and Charles Spurgeon. It also includes an 11-book files of Black American Classics. The Dickinson has links to each and every poem she wrote. The Lincoln has nearly 2000 links. Details at http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/amau.html
British Authors (English, Scottish and Irish) includes 643 books grouped in 50 files. Here I just added works of Gilbert and Sullivan, John Bunyan, Edmund Burke, Robert Burns, Lewis Carroll, Chaucer (Canterbury Tales), Thomas De Quincy, George Gissing, Kenneth Grahame, William Hazlitt, William Hope Hodgson, Anthony Hope, D.H. Lawrence, E. Nesbit, Saki (H.H. Munro), and John Synge. I also added two multi-book files of cook books from before 1800. Details at http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/britishauthors.html
World Authors (books originally written in languages other than English) includes 300 books grouped in 46 files. These books are all in English translation, except when otherwise noted in the table of contents. This CD includes several large and important works that are very difficult to navigate without internal links: Richard Burton’s 16 volume translation of The Arabian Nights, the 20 volumes of The Talmud, The Tanach, and Summa Theologica by Saint Thomas Acquinas. I just added works by Martin Luther, Philip Melancthon, Emanuel Swedenborg, Olive Schreiner, Aristophanes, Alexis de Tocqueville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thucydides, Plutarch, Marcel Proust, Arthur Schopenhauer, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Barcuh de Spinoz, and Joanna Spyri. I also added a multi-book file of Classics of Judaism. Details at http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/woau191bogri.html
Drood by Dan Simmons
Little Brown, 2009, 775 pages, softcover
Deane Rink, writer, producer, and project director, is a voracious reader with very eclectic tastes. He sends us short, provocative reviews, introducing us to fascinating books that otherwise might pass unnoticed. He has worked for PBS, National Geographic, the American Museum of Natural History, Hearst Entertainment, and Carl Sagan. From his involvement in numerous projects about science, he has remarkable insight into present-day scientific endeavors and their implications, and in-depth knowledge of specialized fields (like Antarctica from his two “Live from Antarctica” PBS productions. But he also savors provides illuminating commentary on literature, fantasy, biography, and popular fiction. Links to Deane’s other reviews. You can reach him at deanerink@hotmail.com
The trouble with unreliable narrators is that there are many ways to
be unreliable. A narrator can be self-delusional (The Catcher in
the Rye), or brilliant but completely demented (Pale Fire) or unaware of
the jumble of consciousness (Finnegan’s Wake). The narrator’s
purpose might be to reduce his own culpability (Lolita), or to demonstrate
the naiveté of adolescence (Huckleberry Finn). The narrator
could be
schizophrenic (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest) or retarded (Flowers
for Algernon). No respecter of boundaries, an unreliable narrator
can surface in literary fiction (The Sound and the Fury) or in dime store
murder mysteries (The Murder of Roger Aykroyd). Films are not immune from
this literary trope (The Usual Suspects and Amadeus). How then must
a reader deal with an unreliable narrator who was
one of the first practitioners of this maddening craft? In Drood
by Dan Simmons, the subject is the last few years of the life of England’s
greatest novelist, Charles Dickens, and the narrator is his close friend
and fellow novelist, Wilkie Collins, whose novel The Moonstone is one
of the prime examples of this literary high-wire act.
Dickens survived a bloody train wreck a few years before his death and
the memory of this tragedy (and the unwelcome attention it brought him,
traveling at the time incognito with his mistress) fuels Dickens’
imagination. Collins addresses his story to a “Dear Reader” who
lives a century into the future, weaving a tale about his relationship
with the Inimitable, which starts out with the two novelists as approximate
equals, but ends up with Dickens garnering all the acclaim, much to
the irritation of Collins. Drood, a dark symbol of evil, first appears
to Dickens at the train wreck, and introduces Dickens and Collins to the
demi-monde thriving in the sewers and subterranean caverns beneath
the streets of London. Drood becomes the title character in The Mystery
of Edwin Drood, Dickens’ last and unfinished novel. As envy
and jealousy grow in Collins, a man who cannot function without his
laudanum, he decides that his mentor Dickens must die, that his mentor
and Drood have hatched a scheme of monstrous evil that will
endanger all around them, including Collins’ frail brother, who is
unhappily married to one of Dickens’ daughters.
For anyone not familiar with the renown that Dickens enjoyed those last
years of his life, or with his sold-out stage appearances where he read
from his novels with such force and drama that the audience was
often swept away with tears, Drood accurately recreates this Victorian
world with its love of euphemism and strict social stratification.
As the opium requirements for Collins rise and his dreams increase in
feverish intensity, Collins goes from welcome house guest at Gad’s
Hill, Dickens’ country estate, to outcast and pariah. Collins plots
his revenge, enlisting the help of London private detectives and grave
diggers. He is visited by a doppelganger, another Wilkie Collins
who may or may not be real, whose appearance further confuses the novelist
and drives him more and more daft.
Wilkie Collins outlived Dickens by two decades, so gets the last word
in this fictional tour-de-force. But by the end of the story, the
reader has seen enough to make an assessment quite contrary to the one
that Collins wishes to convey. Though the genre of taking acclaimed
authors and making them characters in other stories is a well-established
literary convention, Simmons accomplishes much more in this
leisurely tale. He gives the reader an accurate portrait of an
age, and does so within the limits of the plausible, while simultaneously
creating a mystery and horror story set in the past but headed for the
future.
Once you sign up for Twitter, you can post messages of 140 characters of less whenever you like, as many messages as you like. The 140 characters is absolute. And the message box shows you letter by letter how many you have left.
What can you do with that? Why should you bother to type in a couple sentences announcing to the world what you are doing today? And why would you ever want to see messages like that written by strangers?
To get a feel for the potential, consider late-breaking news.
Unless you have a well-established news-oriented Web site or blog, when something happens unexpectedly that relates to you directly, you have no way (except email) to spread the word. If you post a new Web page with your observations and insights, it could take days, weeks, or months for that page to get into Google and other search engine indexes. And that would only be one item, not a continuous flow of updates. Also, short items tend to get very low priority in search engine results pages.
With Twitter, your posting is available for search as soon as you post it. That search could be for any word in your posting. And with tags (words preceded by #) you can put your spreading news into high gear, making it easy for interested folks to see all your updates.
Say there were an earthquake in Manitoba and you lived there and wanted to spread the word on what was happening. Just include #manitoba in a quick Twitter note. Then anybody who wanted to learn about it could just search for #manitoba and anybody wanting to add info or ask questions about it could include #manitoba in their posts. You create an online channel for disseminating information and the results are instantaneous.
Anybody can make a tag any time, without doing anything more than using it in a Twitter posting. I constantly use #kindle, #book, #books, #publishing. Think of search terms closely related to your business and see how much activity there is for #thisthatortheotherthing. Use ones that are very active to increase the size of your potential audience. Use ones that are rarely used, if ever, if you want to reach a targeted audience who you notify in advance.
If you are at a meeting and you know there were others who wanted to attend, but couldn’t, you could on your wireless laptop or Blackberry or iPhone or whatever connect to Twitter and type in your notes and related thoughts, consistently including the same tag e.g. #brilliantbiomedtalk and letting friends and colleagues know (by email or even by Twitter) that you are doing so.
Some people set up chat sessions that way, without the hassle of getting special chat software and having attendees download and install it. Just establish and publicize a unique tag (#___) and let people know the time and the topic.
If you are in the airline business and your company is losing money due to empty seats, at Twitter post special deals inviting last-minute customers. Include a tag like #airfare and a link for customers to buy their tickets at this special price. (Airlines do this already. Search for #airfare).
The ability to simply type in a web address and have that automatically converted to an active link can add lots of punch to your postings. What you put at Twitter may be just the headline, the attention getter, with the full text at a Web page or blog of yours (that very few people would find without the help of Twitter). And, yes, the link can be to a specific page at your online store where people can not only read, but also buy.
If you have an online store, Twitter is where you should post notices about new products and special deals and time-limited sales.
Yes, your messages have to be short, but you can use that limit creatively. Remember the old Burma-shave ads you used to see on highways — put together a series of short messages that lead to a memorable punchline.
If in your Twitter searches, you find people who seem knowledgeable about topics you are interested in, or who often post pointers and observations that you enjoy or find useful, just click to become a “follower” of that person. Then every time that person posts something, you’ll see it on your Twitter home page, without having to search.
If you’d like to keep your Twitter audience limited to people you know, decline others who ask to be your followers. Or, better still, for the folks you want to communicate privately with, become followers of them and ask them to become followers of you. Then you have the option of sending them direct messages over Twitter — a clear and simple message system, without either of you having to wade through floods of spam. Yes, you are limited to 140 characters per message, but you can break your message up into a series. Besides the 140 character limit is a good discipline, encouraging you to get immediately to what needs to be said.
If you’d like to check what I’m posting at Twitter, my ID there is richardseltzer http://twitter.com/richardseltzer
If you know of other interesting uses of Twitter, please let me know and I’ll post those ideas here in my blog. (I can’t just open the blog up for direct comments, because hundreds of automatically generated spam messages get sent here every day). And/or post your insights at Twitter with the tag #twitter.
I recently added works of William Hazlitt, William Hope Hodgson, John Kenrick Bangs, Saki, D.H. Lawrence, Charles Kingley, Walter Pater, William Morris, Francis Marion Crawford, F. Scott Fitzgeral, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Hornung, Thomas Aldrich, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Georg Ebers, Hawthorne, Washington Irving, Sinclair Lewis, Stephen Lacock, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mary Rinehart, Ouida, Frances Hodgson Jewett, John Ruskin, Robert Frost, Dostoyevsky, Dreiser, Proust, and Edith Nesbit. I also made multi-book collections for most of these authors -- 6 to 14 books in a single file, with active table of contents, for just 99 cents.
I also added links to each poem in the Complete Works of Robert Burns, the Complete Poetical Work of Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, Wordsworth, and Walt Whitmans' Leaves of Grass.
FYI — I recently got an email from a customer who has the new Kindle DX. (I was surprised because at the announcement, Amazon said they expected to start shipping in August.) This customer tells me that he sees a formatting problem in about a dozen of my multi-book files. This problem — strange un-hypenated word breaks at the end of lines — does not appear on my Kindle (one of the originals). I have edited the files he pointed me to and uploaded to the Kindle Store new versions at should take care of that problem. If you have seen anything of that kind, please let me know so I can deal with it and also so I can determine if this problem is unique to the DX. (It would be troubling if the DX handles file formatting differently than the Kindle 1 and 2).
Yes, it’s difficult to cope with the notion that what we perceive and
what our minds make of what we perceive does not match the “real” world
around us. But our apparatus for perceiving and thinking
evolved in this world, and hence I have a basic faith that for practical
purposes the equipment does an okay job, and what I think is close enough
to what “is” (whatever “is” means). But I find it disconcerting to realize
now that this equipment that I use to determine what is “true” and “important”
isn’t static. It changes radically over time.
In other words, whether I thought the Earth was flat or round, I presumed that the mechanism (combination of perception and reasoning power) that I used to arrive at that conclusion was constant. Now I realize that that is not the case.
The typical challenge to the assertion “I think therefore I am” is that it presumes the existence of a subject who can think. Now I’d question that from the perspective that the thinking apparatus changes over time; so if I define who I am by how I think, I am a different person today than I was 20 years ago and than I’ll be 20 years from now (if I should live so long), not just because of accumulated experience and memories, but because the equipment I depend on for my perceiving and my thinking works differently, and that difference is outside of my control.
I recently read “Talks for Teachers About Psychology” by William James. That started me thinking in this direction. It’s a user’s guide for the human mind. Nothing startlingly new, but well stated and making you realize things you should have realized long ago. For instance, if you focus on one kind of activity, one realm of knowledge (which is natural as you advance in your career) it becomes harder and harder for you to learn new things that are unrelated. You might postpone learning about something you are curious about or doing something you enjoy, only to discover later that you no longer can make sense or it or no longer can enjoy it. James didn’t say this, but the analogy that came to me was the ability to digest milk. If you go for a long stretch without drinking milk, you lose the ability to digest milk, because chemicals in milk are constituents in the chemicals neeed to digest it. That’s another way of saying — use it or lose it.
I wonder if I would have made other life choices if I had understood that principle when I was in my 20s and 30s.
On the plus side, I have kept up with a wide variety of interests. On the minus side, I’ll probably never be able to decipher Japanese (no surprise there) or make sense of advanced math and science (that I didn’t realize).
A pessimist would say that that our ability to think deteriorates as we age, just as our ability to see and to walk.
But my instinct tells me (and that “feels” more reliable than reason) that what matters overall isn’t the individual mind, but rather the results of our collective thinking and what we do based on that thinking: that the aging mind has characteristics that are important when mixed with the diversity of other ways of thinking. In other words, I believe the world needs old fogies like me, just like it needs young whipper-snappers :-)
If you knew beforehand the long-term effects of what you were about to do, in all their permutations, you would never do anything. And even knowing exactly what would happen next, and then next, and then next, you wouldn’t really know anything, because at each new instance the context and hence the meaning would have changed. The old Heraclitus bit, that you can never cross the same river twice. If you could relive any moment of your life, it wouldn’t be the same moment, because your knowledge/consciousness/perspective would be so different.
This discussion reminds me of an essay I read back in high school “Grandeurs and Miseries of Old Age” by Elmer Davis (from his collection “But We Were Born Free”).
I’m now 63, and getting unexpected emails from old friends re-evaluating their life’s work. I guess we’re at the age when we realize that we’re moving from middle-game to end-game, and a change of strategy makes sense.
My father (86) was talking that way about a week ago. Apparently, he is having trouble sleeping at night, unintentionally going over and over in his mind decision points in his life and why it turned out one way rather than another, wondering whether he made the right choice, wondering what could have happened; heavy with regret. I mentioned that my take on that was that we have a natural proclivity, and that what seem like decisions often aren’t decisions at all. In our guts, we know what we are going to do, what we have to do because we are who we are. And the reasons we give are simply rationalizations, excuses we cobble together. Yes, there are random events that affect our lives. But in many cases, those just temporarily knock us off track, and we continue in the same general direction by a different path (cf. movies Sliding Doors and Wonderland). Think of Einsteinian space-time. There are ups and downs in that landscape. There’s a shape to time. As we approach a decision-point, the further we go in one direction everything gets difficult and painful (you trip over yourself, you can’t find the words, you forget things that you have to remember; you are at odds with yourself); and in another direction the path feels right. And if you go the first way despite the obstacles, soon there’s another branching of the path, another choice, and then another; and, most likely, sooner or later you find your way back to what was naural for you.
A few nights ago, I had an alternative reality dream that I met my wife at a party two years before I actually met her (in 1968, instead of 1970). That may have actually happened. She may have come to a party in my dorm room when she was a freshman and I was a senior. In the dream, we fell for each other immediately. She got pregnant. We married. In the dream our first child was born six years earlier than in this version of reality. But the shape of our lives wound up very much the same.
So 1) you can’t judge what you do based on the consequences; you should just do what you feel is best, and do it as well as you can, and 2) your life isn’t as subject to random occurences as at first appears, nor is it as much under your control as you believe.
Basically, I believe that there is more to your life than you are ever likely to realize. And that should inspire not frustration, but rather wonder, curiosity, and reverence.
By doubling each generation, counting backwards, 1000 years ago, about 36 generations ago, you had nearly 69 billion ancestors (that’s 2 to the power of 36). At that time, there were only about 50 million people alive in Europe. So along the way, there was lots of intermarriage, and, basically, everyone of European descent alive today is a cousin of everyone else, and probably in multiple ways.
That means that there were people alive in Europe a thousand years ago who were the ancestors of everyone of European descent who is alive today. In fact, there were probably hundreds, no thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of people alive a thousand years ago who became the ancestors of everyone of European descent alive today.
Let’s flip that concept and take into account that people are much more mobile today than they were a thousand years ago. Let’s look ahead a thousand years. In the year 3000, every human being alive on Earth (if the human race survives that long) will be a descendant of people who are alive today, and not just of one person alive today. No, odds are they will be descendants of hundreds, thousands, even millions of people who are alive today. In other words, if you are a parent or could become one, there’s a reasonable chance that everyone alive a thousand years from now will have genes that passed through you. That is an awesome responsibility. Be careful. Be proud. The future of the human race depends on you.
In most cases, I only knew these people briefly or in a single aspect of their lives, but their every action seemed to indicate focus, intensity, consistency, and dedication. They were proud of what they did and how they did it — proud that what they did showed who they were.
The Machinist
I forget his name. He was foreman at Econotool, a machine shop in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I worked there a couple of summers back when I was in college, more than 40 years ago. They made cutting tools which were resold by Black and Decker. They taught me a few simple repetitive tasks. I silver-soldered carbide blades to steel shanks, keeping a close watch on temperature and time. I also ground those carbide blades on a diamond wheel, using a rig designed to sharpen them at the specified cutting angle. It was easy to clamp the raw piece into position and grind away. it was difficult to do this hundreds of times a day and give it your full attention — to not fall half-asleep with boredom and blunder disastrously.
The foreman knew everything there was to know about the machines I was working on and all the other machines in the plant. He could lean them and fix them. Given a blueprint, he could adjust them, set them up, make rigs, etc. so they would turn out quality product repeatedly. If he didn’t have a replacement part, he could machine that part from scrap metal; and he enjoyed such unexpected challenges.
This was “blue collar” work, but he wore a white shirt — a brightly clean shirt that he wore proudly. He worked hard, but at the end of the day that shirt was always as clean as at the beginning. He worked with no waste movements, no spills, no accidents — all from unremitting dedication to what he did.
He reminded me of a craftsman in the Middle Ages whose craft was his identity (and became his name, like “Cooper” or “Smith”), who conscientiously devoted his full attention to his work, day after day. From the way he worked, you knew he believed that what he did mattered, that doing it well meant that his life mattered. Money was secondary. His work was his religion. He handled his tools and his machinery with the respect and pride of a young priest serving mass.
The Postal Clerk
Jack, now retired, was a clerk at the West Roxbury, Mass. Post Office for 30 years. He approached his job with a level of seriousness and respect similar to the foreman at Econotool. He knew every postal regulation by word and in spirit. When a question arose, his fellow clerks turned first to him, not the book. When a customer had a question or misunderstood the options and was about to make a costly decision, Jack explained the rules and also the practical aspects of how the mail is handled, without talking down. You got a mini-lesson on the postal service and also on life, from someone who could have been a great teacher but clearly took pride in being a great postal clerk.
He didn’t just sell you stamps and make sure you had filled out the right paperwork for shipping packages overseas or for applying for passports. While doing everything that needed to be done as efficiently as could be done, he would smile and give you a tidbit of information or advice for the future; and he’d often set in motion of the many elaborate gadgets he had on display in his work area. These were liquid mind-mystifiers — turn them upside down and bubbles moved in random but beautiful patterns — confined but yet fee, and demanding your attention.
I hope that in retirement he still finds ways to take pleasure and in and pride from the necessary details of life. I miss him.
The Gas Station Owner
Takis, a Greek immigrant, owned a Shell franchise in West Roxbury. Before I met him, I never paid attention to where I bought gas or who sold it to me. it was a commodity and the people who did the pumping or handled the cash register were faceless. You might feel loyalty to a church or to an Elks Club, but one gas station was the same as another.
During the oil boycott of 1973, gas suddenly became scarce. When we needed gas, my wife and I took turns waiting for hours in line, and some times, despite the wait, got nothing. One day, at random, my wife got in line at Takis Shell. The owner came out and told her, “You are a regular customer. You are special. We take care of you.” We hadn’t been “regular” customers before. But we were ever after that, benefiting from his special treatment during the boycott, and going back to his station and only his station for nearly 30 years.
When other gas stations automated so customers could pay at the pump and never see or talk to anyone, Takis taped over the credit card slots so you had to walk into his office to do the transaction. He knew you by name, talked about himself and his family and asked about you and your family; and he followed up on conversational details from one time to the next. Some times his wife or his son was behind the cash register. You weren’t just buying gas; you were touching base with old friends. While in the office, often you bought one of the snacks on display or you asked for advice about a strange noise your car was making. And if your car needed fixing that was where you took it for repair. Whereas you could have spread your “buying power” anonymously among a dozen local gas stations, you concentrated all your purchases here; and, and without even considering price, you felt you benefited from a business relationship of a kind that you had never suspected was possible. Going to this gas station was like going to the general store a hundred years ago — it was both social and business.
About eight years ago, Shell put Takis out of business. Apparently, Shell decided to shut down franchises and instead to sell through company-owned stations. A few days before Takis turned over ownership, a reporter from the local newspaper was talking to him in his office when I happened to walk in. Takis pointed to me as an example of a loyal customer. And talking to the reporter, I realized how much I had learned from Takis over the years and had put into practice in my Web based business. In the short run, automation may save you time and money, but in the long run it could cost you dearly — making your operation the same as many others, putting you at the mercy of larger companies that sooner or later will under-price you out of business. It’s always worth the time and trouble to talk to customers, to get to know something about them, to go out of your way for them. And if there’s any kind of a glitch so you need to spend more time, that’s an additional opportunity to build a relationship. The more what you have to sell is normally perceived as a commodity (like public-domain books), the more important it is to build relationships with customers, to give them good reasons, both tangible and intangible for coming back for more.
Today’s company-owned station uses pay-at-the-pump automation. The air
pump, which used to be free to all, is coin-operated. They do car washes,
but handle no repairs, not even flat tires. I don’t know the people who
run it. I never go there. It looks like few people do. I miss Takis.
written February to July, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Richard Seltzer
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[A few months ago, I chose as the Ebook of the Week, “Other People’s Money by Emile Gaboriau, who was a popular mystery writer before the days of Sherlock Holmes. In reading that book, I was struck by the similarities between late 19th century Paris and present-day America. Many of the characters have no conscience, no sense of wrong doing when dealing with “other people’s money”. Along the way, the author describes a Ponzi scheme and also a business that today we would label “trading toxic assets”.
I included that observation in my cover email, and Ian Carter, in the UK, responded: “Some interesting thoughts there, Richard, especially about the similarities between Paris then and America now. How do we identify what’s gone wrong with our countries (or rather, the people in them) and attempt to redress the balance?”
That started me thinking, and I woke up the middle of the night with
the idea that become the following story.]
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This story has not yet been published in printed form. To correspond
with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com or snail mail to Richard
Seltzer, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477.
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“What’s wrong?” boomed the Chairman.
“Madoff.”
“Wall Street.”
“Main Street.”
“The moral fabric of society has been ripped apart.”
“There is no moral fabric left at all.”
“And what good do answers like that do us?” the Chairman boomed again. “They offer no hint of what we could do to fix this mess.”
“Gossip,” came a whisper from the far end of the table.
“What was that? Speak up!”
“Gossip,” she repeated louder. Everyone stared at her in disbelief not
at what she had said, but that she had said anything at all. This was the
first time in over a hundred years that she had spoken at a board
meeting.
“Gossip? What kind of answer is that?” insisted the Chairman.
“The lack of gossip is the problem.”
“Lack of gossip, you say? With all the tabloids and celebrity magazines and television shows? There’s more gossip today than ever in the history of mankind.”
“I don't mean tabloid gossip. And I don't mean nosey busy-body gossip. I mean neighborhood gossip. Talk by ordinary people who are concerned about the doings and feelings of their friends and neighbors. It's how a community holds together and knows who is in trouble and how to help. How the community regulates itself. Today, most people don't know their neighbors enough to talk to them or about them. The lack of that kind of gossip is the problem, and bringing back that kind of gossip is the way to rebuild the moral fabric of society.”
The silence was only broken by the numerous involuntary twitching of wings, dozens of pairs of wings.
“Explain, young lady, whatever your name is.”
“Prudence. My name is Prudence.”
“And your role and rank?”
“Gossip Specialist, First Class.”
“We still have gossip specialists? I thought the advance of technology and the growth of global awareness had eliminated gossip as a major source of trouble.”
“Unintended consequences.”
“What?”
“Reducing gossip to isolated social ponds led to the problem you are talking about. Now the issue is too little gossip, not too much.”
“Gossip! You want to encourage more gossip? What, in the name of Saint … Saint … in the name of Myself, are you talking about?”
The Second Deputy Chairman, sitting at the left hand of the Chairman added, “Gossip is people nosing into one another’s business. Nasty mean-spirited talk.”
“No,” Prudence continued. “Gossip is people discussing standards of behavior and deviations from it. It means looking beyond the surface of what happens and speculating on the real meaning of events and gestures and words. It builds social intuition at the same time as curbing disruptive behavior.”
“It’s the opposite of freedom and independence,” pursued the Second Deputy Chairman.
“Exactly. It’s the slow cumulative process of building a social sense, of valuing social coherence and responsibility.”
“And what of the sacred right of privacy?” objected the Second Deputy Chairman.
“No, she’s right,” added the First Deputy Chairman, sitting at the right hand of the Chairman. “We need balance. We need balance between the rights of the individual and of society.”
The Chairman interrupted, “We don’t need a theoretical debate. We need a plan of action. Prudence, what possible use is this gossip idea of yours?”
“Just let me try.”
“Try what?”
“To restart the web of gossip on a small scale, to prove that it can be done and that it affects people the way I believe it can.”
“Done!” exclaimed the Chairman, with a bang of his gavel.
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The Second Deputy Chairman introduced Prudence to her assignment. "Silver Street, South Roxbury, a Boston suburb. McSweeney, Smith, Mirijanian, Maxwell, Darby, Dwight, Kazantzakis, Lopez, O'Leary, Donahue, Mason, Rodriguez... There's the complete list. Twenty families in all. These are all two-story clapboard, single-family homes, built between 1920 and 1940. Those that were appraised two years ago, for refinancing, came in at between $400,000 and $500,000. Half the families have young children and have lived on this street for less than ten years. The others have grown children who have moved away. Those have lived here for more than 30 years.
"The kids, with few exceptions, go to different schools -- half to private and half bussed to other parts of the city. In the summer, the kids go to camp -- half to day camp and half overnight. With few exceptions, the wives as well as the husbands work. On summer weekends, if the weather is good, the young families leave town to relax and have fun elsewhere. The older couples stay inside with their air conditioners on. Aside from the occasional lawnmower, the street is quiet.
"The average resident can name no more than three other families on the block, and might not recognize any of their neighbors if they chanced on them in a different context.
"At Halloween, half the kids go to parties in other neighborhoods. The other half trick-or-treat at the houses of neighbors who probably wouldn't recognize them even if they didn't wear masks.
"A realtor would describe this as a quiet friendly neighborhood. Stable. Racially and culturally mixed. An ideal 21st century community.
"And you want to transform this modern Eden into a hotbed of gossip, with all the neighbors meddling in one another's business? I sincerely doubt that you can do that."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir."
"You have just five days, and everything you do must appear both natural and legal, from a human perspective."
"Of course, sir."
"So what do you propose to do?"
"I'll move in."
"What?"
"I'll take the empty house on the corner.
"The one that's foreclosed and up for auction today?"
"Yes."
"And what?"
"That's all. Human nature will do the rest."
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The original owners had moved back to Indiana to live with family and prepare for a fresh start. Two speculators had planned to go to the auction. One had severe stomach pains -- probably a virus or maybe it was the peppers in his mother-in-law's spaghetti sauce. The other was stuck on Route 128, with an over-heated radiator. He had been warned it should be replaced, but had put off the work because money was tight. The bank representative, who was supposed to establish the minimum bid, was immersed in family squabbles, trying to save his marriage. The auction slipped his mind.
Prudence was the only buyer who showed up for the auction. She bid and paid $100.
A few minutes later, a moving van pulled up with her furniture. The van's gears ground with a penetrating shriek, and it maneuvered into a parking space by the curb, with loud beeping backup noises.
Neighbors came to their doors; and, within seconds, word had spread from one stranger-neighbor to another -- $100, just $100."
"Well, she certainly is one lucky lady," said Mrs. Darby. "That's like winning the lottery."
"That's way beyond luck," said Mr. Mason. "She must have connections upstairs."
"Upstairs?"
"Like way upstairs. Miracle upstairs."
"Somebody must have screwed up royally," said Mr. O'Leary, who worked for a bank. "Things like that don't just happen every day. The bank should have set a minimum bid, say $200,000. Enough to cover their investment. What an unthinkable mistake!"
"That's great for her, sure. But for us..." Mr. Rodriguez began.
"We're screwed," confirmed Mrs. McSweeney.
"What were the last two sales on this block?" asked Mr. Mason.
"The Dowlings for $430,000 and last year the James's for $420,000," answered Mrs. Mirijanian.
By now at least one adult from each house on the block was standing in the street, watching the movers in action.
"$137,000," concluded Mrs. Lopez, who worked part-time as a realtor. "That's what this sale just cost each of us. $137,000."
"What?" asked Mr. Donahue.
"She's right. $137,000," confirmed Mr. O'Leary, who worked for a bank. "When you want to buy or take out a home equity loan or refinance, banks depend on appraisals to establish the market value of homes. That market value is based on an average of three recent 'comparable sales' in the neighborhood. for us, that average just dropped from about $420,000 to $283,000."
"That's what I said," repeated Mrs. McSweeney. "We're screwed."
Prudence interrupted the financial speculation, shaking hands, introducing herself and inviting everyone to a spaghetti dinner that night at her new house. She had a new recipe she wanted to try.
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All of the couples showed up for the dinner, but they left their children at home. At first, aside from formalities, all the conversation was between husband and wife, quietly, cautiously -- smiling at their neighbors, but reluctant to initiate real talk, embarrassed to have lived so near them for so long and never have gotten to know them.
They walked around, with drinks and food, checking out this house they had never been in before. Structurally, it was very similar to their own homes. None of them had known, except by name, the people who had lived here for more than 20 years. No one had suspected that they had had financial problems.
Prudence smiled at each of them as she served the spaghetti. She knew their foibles, their weaknesses, their ambitions. She saw the way Mr. McSweeney's eyes wandered to Mrs. Lopez, and that other couples noticed that and commented. She saw Mr. Kazantzakis and Mrs. Dwight at the back window, admiring the garden they had never seen before. She saw the Masons and the Maxwells take out and share pictures of their children who went to different schools and different summer camps. She saw Mr. Rodriguez in a Red Sox cap scowling across the room at Mr. Darby in a Yankees cap. It wouldn't take much for these strangers to become friends and rivals, for small incidents in their lives to be magnified and transformed in the conversations of their neighbors, for them to become aware of and concerned about what their neighbors might think and say of them. Her purchase and her spaghetti were just catalysts. These strangers living near one another by chance could and would become a community.
"What a mess. What a stinking rotten mess," Mrs. McSweeney muttered outloud to herself She was too upset to eat. "This Pru may well be a fine person and a social neighbor. But the fact remains, her windfall is our downfall. The way I figure it -- $137,000 times 20 houses -- we have collectively lost over $2,700,000 today."
"But that's collectively," Mr. Lopez corrected her, after a few inspiring forks full of spaghetti. "We're not alone. And as long as we're not alone, we're not helpless."
"Meaning?"
"Well, the fact that this house sold for cheap has dropped property values. But if this same house sold again for its old value, we'd be right back where were yesterday."
"And who is going to buy it for such a price in today's market?"
"Why not us?" Mr. Lopez suggested.
"Sure, mister. We've got $400,000 sitting around. Or some bank is likely to lend us that on a house that just sold for $100."
"Well, there are twenty of us -- twenty families. If we could each come up with $20,000..."
"I don't know about you and the others, but to me $20,000 is more than pocket change. How am I supposed to come up with that kind of money?"
"Well, you only need to commit that money for a few weeks. Then you'll get it back."
"You mean you expect to resell this house at full value in just a few weeks? It's people like you who made Madoff rich."
"We've all got a stake in this. And if we pull together..."
Mrs. McSweeney paused to reflect, ate some spaghetti, ate some more, then smiled broadly. "Come to think of it, you're right. If each one of us could come up with the short-term cash, one way or another, we could do it. We could buy this place out-right. That would prop up the market value of our houses and this house as well. We could then mortgage this place and use the proceeds to pay off our $20,000 investments."
"But how would we pay the monthly mortgage bills?" asked Mr. Mirijanian, who had overheard this interchange.
"Divide that mortgage payment by twenty and it becomes manageable,"
Mrs. McSweeney answered. "At today's rates on a $400,000 mortgage, that's
probably less than $150 per month per family. And when the economy
turns around, we can sell and pay off the mortgage."
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Prudence returned to the board room, triumphant.
The Second Deputy Chairman humbly congratulated her. "Not only did she do all this in less than five days, but her efforts will yield a profit of $400,000, which could finance some very important charity work."
"Well, not quite. There is, of course, the matter of income tax -- state and federal."
"Yes," he admitted, "that could be substantial. It's unfortunate you couldn't have used the money to buy another house and so avoid the tax."
"Or I could have given the money back to the people who paid it to me."
"But that would have negated the effect of the second sale on the market value, and it could have led to some nasty legal problems."
"Yes. Instead, I bought another nearby foreclosed house."
"You didn't spend all the money, did you?"
"Not on that one. That would have been foolish since I could buy it for a fraction of its former market value -- though higher than the first one because, of course, the bank and the local speculators had learned from the first experience."
"So you now own another house?"
"Actually, three more houses. The first one sold for so much less than $400,000 that there was plenty of money left, and since I wasn't going to be able to make the tax problem go away, I had to factor that cost into the project."
"But if this approach worked for one neighborhood, it could work for another and another. The neighbors of those other houses will band together to buy back these other three houses from you and that could give you enough money to buy nine or ten more houses. And the money from that... Why in a few months you could buy every foreclosed house in the city. And then you could expand to other cities, then other countries. Why this is like Madoff in reverse. You're creating value and the benefits snowball."
"No. Everything you do has consequences you can't foresee. People knowing this happened before will get in the way of it happening again. But this little experiment could have a lasting effect."
"How?"
"The story spread on the news -- print, broadcast, and online. And it seems likely that legislation at least at the state and maybe at the federal level will change how homes are valued for mortgage loans. Foreclosures won't be counted, and now they'll average 30 instead of just 3 recent sales, making the values much more stable, without any need for federal funds.
A
library for the price of a book.
Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, West Roxbury, MA 02132. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com
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