Fourth Amendment is alive and being protected by librarians...

There has been much news and ranting (e.g. here, here, here, here, here, and here) about a nice young librarian and her staff. In brief, on June 26th five state troopers showed up at the Kimball Public Library in Randolph, VT and demanded that the children's librarian, Judith Flint, turn over the libraries 5 public terminals to them. She said that would be fine, as soon as they showed her a search warrant. And thus the fun began.

The library's director, Amy Grasmick (pictured) arrived to find "a bunch of very tall men encircling a very small woman," (Flint is 4-foot-10...I'd give a great deal to find a picture of *that*). She backed up her librarian and demanded they return with a warrant. They did secure the machines to prevent tampering and the police did return with a warrant.

Interestingly, a new Vermont law requires libraries to demand court orders in such situations took effect on July 1, but it wasn't in place that June day. The library's policy was to require one. This would seem to fly in the face of the beloved "Patriot" Act, that basically states that that 4th Amendment to the US Constitution is quaint and dated and should be ignored given the constant threat confronting this country and its ever-so-fearful inhabitants.

The great danger with all these folk who complain about criminals getting off on "technicalities" and the governments demands that they have effectively unfettered access to any data they want, any time and without limit is that these "technicalities" are Constitutionally protected rights and they simply can not be tossed to the wayside because we don't like the suspect or because the government says it can't wait (N.B. there are clear exceptions relating to the issue of exigent circumstances). I am not going to rant about the affront to the Constitution ironically call the "Patriot" Act as it would take to long, annoy me too much and it has been done cogently elsewhere (see here and more broadly here).

Suffice it to say that I am a great fan of feisty librarians [hi mom] everywhere. It is strangely fitting that these stewards of knowledge are on the front-lines of this battle that cuts to the core of what this country *should* embody. So a tip-of-the-hat to our librarians...thank you for defending the constitution from those who should know better....

Speaking of feisty librarian and the like, I want to give a strong plug for one of my favorite blogs, Librarian.net ("putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999"). J. West came into her own around the Patriot Act...posting a set of signs to notify patrons of federal monitoring to great acclaim. It is a great site and should be on your RSS list.

No, I can not ever forgive you....

So Lee Isreal's book, Can You Ever Forgive Me?: Memoirs of a Literary Forger is out. No link, it is not worthy. I am have a soft-spot for literary crime [when it does not involve...er...me]. There are some great stories of brilliant forgeries, elegant frauds and clever manipulations. Of course the punch line is that, in order for the stories to be "known", the evil-doers have been caught and the work/inscription/letter has been relegated to the "forgery files" (mind you, a collectible area in and of itself).

For every "great" forger, there are doubtless a dozen or so marginal ones, passing off Dickens' signed in ballpoint pen...a random search on ebay at any given time will doubtless offer up a wide selection of "inscribed" of dubious veracity. Somewhere between the two poles rests the likes of Ms. Isreal. She is/was, in brief, a book thief and a forger. I did not know her personally, though there are many in the book world that did/do. I have read a galley of her book and will not bother getting a copy. I was planning to review it, as I have been reading a great deal about literary forgeries of late, preparing for a presentation, but then I read Kevin MacDonnell's review on one of the ABAA listserv groups. It is better than any I would have written and he was kind enough to allow me to post it here:

It's 125pp of over-written chatty arrogance, heavily padded with facsimiles of what she considers her best forgeries, of which she is brazenly proud. She describes her forging career as "fun" and drops celebrity names faster than a flasher can drop his trousers, a simile that comes to mind because by the end of the book you feel like you've been assaulted by a forger-flasher.

Although she churned out some celebrity biographies years ago, she happily calls her forgeries "her best work." The closest she comes to explaining why she did it is that she fell on tough times, needed money, and besides, she was alive and the people whose letters she was stealing and/or forging were dead. No further reasons given. At one point she uses the phrase "screw with history" but never gets around to confronting her immorality, and many of her behaviors that she describes at length with glee are appallingly sleazy.

With the exception of Catherine Barnes she describes most dealers as greedy and stupid. The closest she comes to admitting guilt over the thefts is when she says that guilt is mitigated by her help in recovering the stolen letters of "drunken American writers." But she makes very clear that she has little or no guilt over her forgeries. She has contempt for the court system, and readily admits that she never attended AA meetings that were a requirement of her probation and calls community service "bullshit."

Her account of Alan Weiner is that he extorted her for $5,000 in return for not testifying against her, but Alan's conversations with me at the time made clear that he pressed harder than any of her victims to get her convicted, was disgusted by her, and wanted her to spend a long time in jail. I mentioned previously in this list that she left a vile message on his answering machine after his death for the sole purpose of bringing more pain to his grieving family.

Much of her account also relies heavily on what she claims Jack, her accomplice, did or did not do. Both Alan Weiner and Jack are dead, so the reader can draw his own conclusions on whether to trust this account by a convicted thief and forger. By the end of the book it's clear she doesn't want to be forgiven; she wants to be admired. But the reader will find it impossible to find anything to forgive or admire in this vulgar display of narcissism.

This sums her and the book up as well as any could... It would be interesting to find out if she is still under the terms of her probation...as she explicitly states that she has violated the terms and actually having to serve out her sentence would probably be a good thing.

If you want a good read about better forgers, read Charles Hamilton's Great Forgers and Famous Fakes (1980 or the 1996 2nd Revised). A fair number of them I can forgive...for the art of their work, the chutzpa of the attempt and/or the humor of it...but I really find no reason to forgive Ms. Isreal. While it makes a cute title, I don't think she actually wants or cares about forgiveness, nor do I think she deserves it. [Again, thanks to Kevin for his permission to reprint his review.]

Nice photo (of book) in MAD...

Maine Antiques Digest has a nice spread on the Boston MABA show. The first two photos are of me and the Moxon. The Moxon, at least, is photogenic. It was a great show and the article is very nice. I really need to get out more...I wonder if I can catalogue books while biking... [N.B. You might want to right click on the link and download, as it is pretty big .pdf.]

Fall Show Schedule more or less set...

Below, please find where we will most likely be hiding out this Fall. Come visit. The usual offer re blueberry jam stands.

Baltimore Summer Antique and Antiquarian Book Show
Baltimore Conv. Center, Baltimore, MD - Aug. 28-31st

Maine Antiquarian Book and Paper Show
Wyndham Hotel, Portland, ME - Sept. 28th

Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair and Book Arts Show 2008
Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, Seattle, WA - Oct. 11-12th

West Side Antiquarian Book & Ephemera Fair
Altman Bldg., New York, NY - Oct. 17-18th

ABAA Boston Book Fair
Hynes Conv. Center, Boston, MA - Nov. 14-16st

The last will be our first ABAA fair. I've squirreled away some reasonably special things and I'm hoping for a special treat...more to follow if it comes to pass.

Hope to see you at one or more...

Interesting look at the politics of bookdealers...

HuffPost is offering an interesting tool to look at campaign donations to various parties/candidates. Fundrace2008 taps into the public records database of campaign giving...and they have just created the ability to track donations by profession.

If you search (as above) "bookseller", you find that 234 people (with some duplication of names) have donated approximately $185,000. Is it surprising that $175,000 went to Obamarama and Co. and only $10,000 to the Republicans (and much/most of that to Ron Paul)?

It does not aggregate related "occupations", so you get different lists if you search "rare book dealer" or "bookdealer" or "book dealer" or "book seller", etc. Enjoy.

Thanks to Tom Congalton of Between the Covers Rare Books for the heads-up on this.

Anniversary Parade....

We attended the annual Ian and Suzanne's Anniversary Parade held in the neighboring town of Thomaston. They had spend *many* years practicing and preparing to help us celebrate our anniversary and are pretty good at it by now.

It is about as perfect as a small town parade can be. The "floats" are pretty surreal...I have included two examples in the photos (one of a huge fiberglass lobster and the other a big dragon that was "for" St. George (get it, St. George and the Dragon...)...built by and designed after Dragon Cement (and pulled by one for their trucks).

Pretty much every fire truck in every adjoining town joins in and has a merry time showing off how many different siren sounds they have and how many children they can make cover their ears and/or cry. The photographed truck comes from our very own St. George volunteer fire dept.

Interestingly, both the Knox County Dems and Repubs marched they always do. In past years, they tend to have pretty much even numbers of equally riled up folk...you know, people willing to wander along a parade route for a mile or so in the hot sun while holding political signs...urgh. This year was different.

The dems had a *huge* crowd with folks carrying a big Obamarama banner, many small signs and signs for pretty much every major and minor dem running here in Maine (see pictured for the start of them). They had at least 100 people or so. The repubs, on the other hand, had no more than 15 people or so, nearly all carrying signs for one local cadidate. There was *not one* McCain sign and *not one* Susan Collins sign. It was a very interesting comparrison, one group huge and fired up...chanting, laughing and having fun. The other small, subdued and...trudging...for lack of a better term...

My personal favorite was Mr. Johnson, who is running for County Commissioner. He is in his seventies, still working full time (after several major surguries, etc). He can be seen driving the big tractorn in the parade. I may move my registered residence just so I can vote for him.

I did not include pictures of all...it is really quite wonderful...with a good touch of performance art theatre of the absurd. There are bands (see the Lincolnville Band on their flatbed truck), bagpipers, pirates (really), several charmingly fringe religous groups, the Maine Militia showed off their big ex-military trucks, folks who like their cars/trucks/motorcycles a bit too much, Shriners, Kwiwanas and folks like that. Then there are the Renaissance knights and maidens (knights fighting along the entire route with swords, the women in heavy gowns looking hot (literally, less so figuratively)... A good time is had by all.

I can not recommend getting married on the 4th of July highly enough. Everything is festive. People hang banners and flags and have picnics and parades and fairs and fireworks. All for us. Happy Anniversary Day, everyone.

Happy Anniversary...

As many of you surely know, my wife and I were married on this very day...there are parades and fireworks across the country in celebration, so it is a little hard to miss. My parents gave us a wonderful present for the front room of
the "shop".

It is a type drawer, complete with labeled handle (Bodoni Italics). Dad made a leg/frame for the drawer and had tempered glass cut for the top. He then found all sorts of little Bodoni snippits, examples of type and tidbits of data.

I have a bunch of different "IJK"s in various woo

den type and and we will have to find suitably cool little bits of this and than for the table...maybe some miniture books.

Why grandfathers are cooler than dads...

So Granddaddy had a surprise for the boys when they arrived. He had, following an old Popular Mechanics for Boys instructions, built them a periscope.

This included bringing the wooden tube to the local glass shop and having them cut mirrors perfect for the tube...needless to say the guys in the shop thought it was the coolest thing *they* had seen and I wager their kids will be getting their own soon.

The boys have been looking around corners and over things. The pictures show the front and back of the periscope, the instructions and an orchid as seen through it.

They also brought it to the Parade today and had great fun with it as well.

Dad has also made the boys an "ice scooter" from plans from the turn of the [last] century...three bladed scooter and a specially strap on "pad" that had screws through it in a slight backward angle to make kicking more efficient.

Many years ago, dad I built a Snowball Thrower from a late 1800s "projects for boys" book...it was very cool...basically a small catapult for flinging snowballs (or rocks)...