Book publishing

Book production was how I started in publishing in 1979. In those days everything happened on paper - manuscript typing, copyediting, proofreading, cover review - and the resultant pile of "foul" manuscript and multiple stages of proof at the end of the process required boxes and boxes for the year of storage required after publication. Those huge medical textbooks ate up an immense amount of paper, and my job was to push all of it through the various states of production, which often took a year or more. Revised editions were especially quaint. The authors were sent a copy of the book that had been disassembled, each book page (or each page column for the large-format books) pasted on a sheet of colored paper, usually green as I recall, and the whole mess stamped with new page numbers (there was a little machine). This method provided margins on which to hand-write corrections and mark deletions. We would require the author to type any major updates of more than a sentence of two on separate sheets.

I now have my own book (Owls Head Revisited) in production. I wrote it on a computer, of course, and printed it out just once, for ease of a last, major revision. (As far as I can tell, my publisher has printed the manuscript just once as well.) From then on, everything happened by email: book proposal, contract, proofs. And once in production, so fast! I received the first cover version on May 17, the first text proofs on June 8, and the end of the month will see the first printed copies. I expect that wonderful moment of holding a brand-new book in your hand (even if it was Acid-Base Disorders: Basic Concepts and Clinical Management) will be exactly the same as 35 years ago, just slightly heightened by the terror of sending your own words into the world. 

A Maine Gazetteer: blueberry barrens

The sight of a green box of blueberries always throws me back in time. Some fields near our house in Owls Head used to be occasion for perfect outings with my young daughters. We bent and groaned and happily complained about bugs, picking our several quarts for a taste at lunch and the special glory of a blueberry pie for dessert. I felt that particular joy in accepting what the earth freely gives, not taking greedily but celebrating happily. I know my daughters remember those mornings as fondly as I do, when for a week or two we lived quietly, slowly, closer to nature. I hope they will also remember, now that the town has plowed under the blueberry bushes to make way for a cemetery, that images and loving traditions will survive even bulldozers.

 The love of the land will survive, that is, as long as the rich, slow, ancient way of life is preserved somewhere. In Maine, it is the huge barrens of Washington County east of Bangor and Ellsworth, where the glacial deposits of sandy soil are the perfect substrate for growing blueberries. It’s a complete way of life up there, not just a few weeks a year. The operations have gotten bigger, machines creep in, marketing councils bloviate, but the principles remain the same: family companies, hand labor, minimal “engineering.” Washington County is also one of the poorest places in the country as defined by Federal poverty levels; but thanks to the wild blueberry and remoteness and astounding, undeveloped beauty, perhaps not poor in spirit.

Excerpted from Saving Maine: A Personal Gazetteer

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Why walking?

Having been nearly a month OOM*, I'm very pleased to be back, especially on a mild Tuesday when only a couple of cars during the course of an hour's walk this morning disturbed the germination of skunk cabbage and ideas. Such a walk on the roads and lanes of Owls Head is my emblem of return, and here are the reasons why.

1. Must bow to the currents gods and say that walking is a good form of exercise, not the best, but suitable for someone who no longer cares to impress.
2. Will distinguish walking from hiking, which is more of a worship (of body and vista) than a communion, the way California coast and hills (they stun) contrast with Maine coasts and hills (they soothe).
3. Finds the familiar place, does the same route over and over, yet allows time and space to expect the unusual (eagle, fallen tree, first skunk cabbage of spring, progress on that McMansion down Lucia Beach). Can easily stop and stare or grouse.
4. Provides just enough tonic for restlessness. Not necessary to beat the restlessness out with tennis or running, just applies a nice salve.
5. Springs me outside walls, face bathed in breeze, bugs, sleet, heat, sunshine, fog - anything but the glow of a screen and the succor of a sofa.
6. Experiences nature with just a little difficulty, a little sweat, and a little soreness in calf and arch after an hour. Pretends to be Great North Woodsman. Could if I wanted to.
7. Allows time to rehearse conversations, in the several senses of the word rehearse: repeats past talks but invents new responses to find a better light or less embarrassment; invents and proposes imaginary dialogue with hero novelists; practices opening lines for future tasks; tries to remember Leonard Cohen lyrics.
8. Does not listen to music - far too irruptive.
9. Solves problems of the world, provides last lines of essays, practices blog posts.
10. Proves that all we really want out of life is to know one place, deeply, lovingly, slowly, sacredly.

*Out Of Maine, Odds-On Melancholy

Sea smoke I

On these very cold days, the ocean wears wisps of sea smoke all day. In the morning it covers pretty much all of the Bay, this western side anyway (for I can't see past Vinalhaven), even appearing quite close to shore where the water is shallowest and presumably therefore coldest (a high difference between air and water temperatures produces the thickest fog). Not that you can call this scantiest of clouds at all thick; sea smoke is a matter of tatters and  rags, wisps and tissues, blown by the wind like wavelets, disappearing just a foot or two above the water. Out in the middle of the bay, sea smokes persists into the afternoon. The greater depth out there means warmer water, and since the thermometer hasn't risen past #$%& 5 degrees today....

What a pale and beautiful cousin of summer fog it is! Much as we romanticize fog, its mystery, the way it blocks out the world (like cars and planes especially), stretches of several days of its hanging around, for which this peninsula is well-known, can be quite depressing. Sea smoke is the definition of ephemeral. You can hardly see enough of it to catch it; you can't get lost in it except metaphorically, it represents such a fleeting connection between water and air, especially in the milder (hah!) afternoon, that you'd miss it if you weren't looking for it.

I like things that exist between. The shore itself is a perfect example, as are birds (like the loon this morning apparently unconcerned about temperatures just at zero, and the crows still ruling space and spruce this afternoon), and book authors, and sunrise and sunset on the ocean. All of us, and all things, live between worlds in one way or another, between life and death at the very least; it's just that some live more spectacularly than others. And sea smoke is a spectacle well worth catching if you can.