Tag Archives: Scholar and Poet Books

Weekly Photo Challenge: Chaos

by

Sometimes I think WordPress has a surveillance camera on my life! How else would they know that my world is entirely chaos at the moment while I, in my natural state, am an extremely organized person? It so happens that I’ve just moved home and home business 35 miles away into a new rental. A normal move is somewhat chaotic. Add to that the fact that our home business is an online used book (and music and whatnot) store called Scholar and Poet Books. (Find us on Facebook or Ebay!) In our inventory and in our rental home, we have AT LEAST 25,000 books. Being quite the ambitious, self-sufficient types, we thought we could move those ourselves over a two-month period. We’re also over 50, both of us. And most of those books were in the attic, 3 flights of stairs up from the curb. Long story short, we had to hire professionals to help us pack up and move the last 285 boxes of books, each weighing roughly 50 lbs. Now all of that is in our new home, and we’re unpacking and organizing. Another yuuuuge task. *sigh* But our new place is gorgeous, a ranch-style house with only one flight of stairs (down to the basement), on land owned by the Conservation Foundation for which I work. I am not complaining! I’m just sharing what a bit of chaos is like — interesting, challenging, exhausting, stimulating.  Here’s a gallery of our old place:


Chaos
Chaos

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Refuse

by

 We are heading into the biggest retail season of the year, so I want to take this opportunity to invite you to consider mindfully and gracefully your relationship to….stuff.  How do your buying habits impact the planet?  Where do you shop? Where do the businesses you support get their resources? What do you do with stuff you don’t want anymore? How do you share what you have?

P1060543

The resources that are expended on the manufacture, trade and transportation of goods on a global scale are staggering and crippling for our planet.  It’s hard to imagine the impact that one shopper has in the whole of that web, but to make ethical and moral choices is the responsibility and joy of citizenry on Earth. You get to live out your values each day.  That is the difference you make.  

Now, I recognize that the urge to buy things can be deeply entrenched in complex psychological motivators, and I’m not about to claim any authoritative understanding of that.  I just know that I don’t have a “shopper’s personality”.  I don’t get excited about buying things or receiving material gifts.  (This was an enigma to my husband, may he rest in peace, who really enjoyed giving me presents.)  I do enjoy using something up completely and never replacing it if possible, finding new ways to use stuff that’s already around, and finding other people who can enjoy stuff that I no longer need. 

sbp3

With all the stuff that’s already been made and is overflowing junk yards and landfills, I think we can all do a better job at using what’s already here.  My partner Steve feels the same way.  He’s been running an online used book store out of our apartment for the last 10 years or so.  He goes to estate sales, book sales and thrift stores and buys good books, unusual books, quality books and lists them on retail websites as a third-party seller so that people who are looking for a specific used book can find it easily at a fair price.  He loves books.  He’s got a B.A. in English, and his very first job was at the public library.  There’s nothing like the feel of a book in your hands or the smell of an old book from your grandmother’s attic! 

Scholar & Poet

Scholar & Poet

Steve’s small business is called Scholar and Poet Books.  If you value or collect books, music, vintage printed material or puzzles, check out our inventory.  You can see our listings on eBay Here, or browse our book list on ABE Books Here.   If you shop on Amazon, you may see our name on the list of sellers for a particular item, but we can’t direct you to our inventory exclusively.  (Many of Amazon’s third-party sellers are actually large warehouses.) If you have friends who are bibliophiles, you can share our Facebook page with them.  Thank you for reading this post and considering my invitation.  May your decisions about Stuff bring you joy and peace!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Creepy!

by

I don’t have to look very far to find “creepy” subjects to photograph.  I simply walk downstairs to the living room, dining room and kitchen.  That’s where we house our Museum.  My partner, Steve, has long been in the estate sale and used book business.  We sell a lot of stuff on e-Bay, Amazon, ABE Books and A Libris through our home business, Scholar and Poet Books.  But we also keep a lot of stuff.  Creepy stuff.  Stuff that Steve thinks is somehow “special”.  And he props this stuff in any available nook and corner that he can find.  Which is why I can easily photograph these:

 cha chacreepy 3creepy 2creepy

 
Creepy