Behold The Dumpster!

Our dumpsters came! Yeah! I suppose that a bookstore blog should really speak to all things bookish…but I look at the blog as a way to visit Titcomb’s Bookshop when you can’t actually walk in the door. A little window into our day. So…anyway….yesterday we officially got underway with our recycling effort. We get shipments of books/toys/cards/stationary every day. Each shipment comes in a cardboard box. On any given day we were stuffing 2 to 5 boxes into our dumpster to be sent to the landfill (14-35 boxes weekly). What a waste! We have now moved to a 2 dumpster system. All paper and cardboard goes into one dumpster (which is picked up bi-weekly) and the rest of the garbage (minus whatever Mom can compost or recycle) goes in to dumpster #2 which is picked up once a month. This whole system makes more sense and, believe it or not, saves us money! How cool is that?? We were so pleased that we even took a picture to share with the world. Behold, the dumpsters.

It Takes A Child

Titcomb’s Bookshop has been in business since 1969.  (Another time I’ll tell you the story of its beginnings, it’s a good story if you haven’t heard it yet.)  All of the 8 children have worked in the shop at one time or another. Since the shop is next to the house where we have lived since 1969, even if we weren’t actually working in the shop we were around books.  Lots and lots of books.  For 25 years the shop only carried used and rare books so we were surrounded by lots and lots of old books.  We love old books.  But….sometimes…..after being around such interesting things you start to take them for granted.  A copy of Thoreau’s Walden from 1909?   Eh…..we see them a lot, no biggie.  Another poetry collection from the late 1800’s, wish it had a prettier cover.

Sometimes you just need a fresh perspective to see the coolness around you.  My 10 year old son came to the Bookshop today (a Titcomb grandchild).  He’s been here plenty of times, but today he was hanging out in the office which is littered with old books (its like old book limbo).  He was suddenly struck by the oldness of everything around him.  “This was really printed in 1850???”, “Wow!  I can see how the type is different.  Did they use a printing press?”  He asked to see the oldest book we have.  When I told him we have a medical book from the 1600’s, his eyes lit up.  “REALLY?, Can I see it?”  (I shouldn’t skip another funny part of the story.  His 7 year old brother looked at an old family bible from the early 1800’s.  His questions was “Is this the real bible? the one written by God?”)

The book was Culpeper’s Directory For Midwives: Or A Guide For Women from 1676 .  It is a wonderful leather bound, thick book that even contains a foldout diagram of how the baby sits in the womb.  We were excited about this book the moment we saw it, but somehow it takes a fresh face to come in and say “This book was around before George Washington was born” to make you realize how cool/exceptional/rare some of the books we see are.

Adam left the shop, but not until he bought his own old book.  He bought a children’s book from 1843 called “Tales and Illustrations by Charlotte Edwards”.  It’s a book of Sunday School stories.  In terms of what we have seen pass through our shop, it’s a ho-hum book where the term “illustrations” is overstated because it has only one!  For Adam, it is the start of a collection and a prized possession.  It is a book that pre-dates the Civil War, the television and even the lightbulb.  Countless hours can be spent pondering his question “I wonder who owned this”.   Hey, it could have been Einstein’s book!  It has an honored spot in his special wooden collection box at the moment.  We have witnessed the creation of a book collector!