Actual Jackson Street Books

If you've just clicked over here from Netroots Nation; Hi! Nice to meet ya! Here's a recap of what Jackson Street Books has done this summer. Check back here for pictures of our new adventures in Bookselling in Washington's Friendliest Town. And if you're out this way, give us a holler. We'd love to meet you in RL.

After 4 1/2 years, and 18 years in our house, taxes and gang activity in our parking lot were the main motivations to get out of Seattle.

So, of course, we had to throw a kick-ass party!

We had met Hypatia and Zathrus in Second Life and quickly agreed to help with the Loneman School Book Drive. Altogether, we sent 12 (really big!) cartons of books to South Dakota. Jane2 sent a generous donation for books, and with the closing discount that became 48 new books!

We loved exploring our new town.

Did you know there are Zebras in Gray's Harbor? Well, there are!

It finally hits. We live here now.

The gardens are truly wonderful. This will keep me busy!

Well, probably more than you wanted to know, but you can also scroll back and find where we talk about books!

Gone

Jackie & Dunlap 'splain that New Yorker Cover

The Case of The Cross-dressing Chinook

Teh Googles can really hit pay dirt sometimes.
Hybrid fanged Co-nooks.

As Southern Oregon's only private eye specializing in fish and wildlife investigations, I expect long lapses between cases. But I haven't had a live client walk through that door since the albino deer caper last year, and even then I got paid off in bear sausage and night crawlers.

Maybe it's the booze talking. It's talked outta turn before. But the stench in the room hangs like wet waders on the hat rack, and it can't be ignored.

If I don't get a case fast, I'll have to pull my shingle, shelve my winged-tipped wading boots for good and beg for my old job as the Fish Hack for the local Fish Wrap.

UPDATE: Linky fixed! Thanks Lobster Johnson!

so ya say you're having a party?

yeah, it's my birthday.


It has been an absolutely frikken amazing year. We changed. From Seattle, to Hoquiam.


And I am endlessly amused. After 49 years.

Smells Like Dead Elephants

A few weeks back, when I asked "What are you reading?" Pissed Off Patricia mentioned Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire, by Matt Taibbi (Grove Atlantic, $14.00). There was an ARC at the house we were staying at so I borrowed it.

Since it was a publisher's Advance copy, there wasn't finished art or cover copy, other than the Washington Post saying "A political reporter with the gonzo spirit that made Hunter S Thompson and P. J. O'Rourke so much fun." As I started reading, I thought this guy must be writing for Rolling Stone, no one else would print this stuff! And indeed, the essays start when he got an editorial job at Rolling Stone.

Taibbi spends time with Bernie Sanders, watching him try to address the House Rules Committee and present 4 amendments, all of which have bi-partisan support. As he describes the lobbyist leprechaun rules that govern DC, it becomes a mirror fun house, all bent on not really doing anything.

"It's funny," Sanders says. "When I first came to Congress, I'd been mayor of Burlington, Vermont - a professional politician. And I didn't know any of this. I assumed that if you get majorities in both houses, you win. I figured it's democracy, right?"

Well, that's what they call it, anyway.

Taibbi attempts to see Cindy Sheehan during the first sit in near Crawford, trying to get past her oh so protective handlers. In Oct 05, he goes to New Orleans with Sean Penn, whose star power is often the only thing that gets them past the barricades for his article Apocalypse There. Later in the book, How To Steal a Coastline from April 06 will show what a massive land grab reconstruction has been. Taibbi is truly humbled by these experiences.

Fort Apache Iraq, Darwinian Warfare, or the Worst Congress Ever, it's really hard to pick my favorite essay. They will all enrage you. This volume tempts me to subscribe to Rolling Stone again, after some 24 years. But I will keep Matt Taibbi's name handy for googling.

This really is a great recommend, thanks so much P.O.P.!

Smells Like Dead Elephants originally came out in Oct 07, so you may have to have your Fine Independent Bookstore order it for you. Or ask your favorite librarian.

So, what are you reading this week?

*from The Book Report at the General's

My Inner French-Canadian Woman has something to say:

A humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions has been playing out in Burma for more than 20 years. Thousands have been killed and many thousands more arrested, forced into slave labour or displaced from their villages by the ruling military regime. Burma’s women have endured rape and other forms of systematic sexual violence employed by the military to enforce its control over the country’s ethnic minorities. On May 3, 2008, Cyclone Nargis brought new and terrible suffering to the people of Burma, suffering made only worse by the military regime’s refusal to promptly accept the international community’s ensuing offers of humanitarian assistance. What began as a natural disaster was soon supplanted by a catastrophe rooted in the pride, paranoia and corruption of Burma’s military rulers.

The Panties for Peace Campaign

The Panties for Peace campaign was launched by the women’s organization Lanna Action for Burma (LAB) on Oct. 16, 2007, in the hopes of bringing an end to the military regime’s rampant abuse of Burma’s population – and the abuse of Burma’s women in particular. Founded in the wake of the military’s brutal response to monk-led pro-democracy uprisings in Burma last fall, the Panties for Peace campaign has been given new and pressing importance by the regime’s self-interested and inhumane response to the devastation of Cyclone Nargis. The campaign has been already launched around the world, in Australia, the Philippines, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, the USA and in Brazil.

More here

Thanks Roisin!