Pendant for a Biker Dude — and Other Quartzsite Vendor Stories

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Maria Langer

The easiest path is often not the best.

“Do you have any black obsidian?”

The question came from a guy in his late 30s or early 40s dressed like a biker. You know the look: thin, black clothes, unkept hair, beard. Yeah, I know that could also describe a hipster, but if you saw him standing next to a hipster dressed the same way, you’d definitely know which guy I was talking about. This guy had an entourage that included two more biker guys and two biker chicks.

My corner booth at Tyson Wells this year. I managed to cram everything in. I used the enclosed space at the front end of my truck camper as a classroom for jewelry making classes; it was easily accessible from my main tent through a doorway and comfy with a table and chairs inside.

The question was ironic, in a way. I had a shit-ton of obsidian slabs, all from a collection of rough I’d had obtained, in trade, from one of my cherry drying clients. Obsidian is volcanic glass and my client had a lot of it in old, broken cherry bins on a cherry orchard he owned. The previous owners had dug it out of the ground when they planted the trees. The rocks — along with a bunch of petrified wood uncovered the same way — had been tossed into the bins. My client acquired it when he acquired the orchard. He knew I worked with rocks and, for a while, I tried to sell the petrified wood for him. But we eventually traded cherry drying standby coverage for that small orchard for the entire collection of rocks. I managed to pick up about 10% of what’s there and still need to retrieve the rest.

So yes, I had obsidian. But turns out that I only had one obsidian cabochon with me: a piece I’d polished for my “before and after” demo box — the box I pull out when people think my extensive cabochon collection are just “tumbled rocks.” (Hint: they’re not.)

I didn’t really want to sell the rock but I also didn’t think he wanted to buy it. So I pulled it out. He asked me what it would cost to make a pendant from it and I did some quick math in my head and said $59. He thanked me and walked away with his group.

I put the rock away.

Hours later, he returned. I’d just made a few nice unexpected sales on what had begun as a very disappointing day. It was about 3:30, which was the time I normally closed up for the day. He asked again about the stone and the pendant. I brought over the box with the stone and pulled it out.

“How much for a pendant?” he asked again.

“Fifty nine dollars,” I replied. “It comes with a sterling silver chain.”

“What if I don’t want the chain?”

Understand that although the chains are solid sterling silver and made in Italy and they’re all brand new, each in their own individual sealed bag, I buy them 100 at a time and get a very good price. So good that saving a chain doesn’t save me enough money to lower the price by more than a few dollars. So I said, “Still fifty-nine.”

He hesitated and then said, “Would you take fifty?”

I blinked, looked him in the eye, and said, “No.”

He stared at me.

I felt a bit of anger coming up inside me, but stayed remarkably calm. I said, “Listen, I’ve been dealing with this for ten days. My price is firm.”

He nodded, looking disappointed, and started to walk away again. I put the rock back in the box.

One of the women in his crew, who had been looking at my pendant display with the other woman, suddenly seemed to realize that something was amiss. “What’s up?” she asked. “How much is it?”

“Fifty nine,” he said, stopping and coming back to the table.

“That’s all?” she asked. “That’s a great price.”

“It’s more than I wanted to spend,” he said.

“So what?” she replied. “That’s what it costs. If you want it, get it.”

Her straightforward comment worked. What followed was a discussion of how I’d make it. Which style of the displayed pendants did he like? Not like? They finally picked one with a distinctive style — one that required a bit more effort on my part (although they didn’t know that) — and I took his name and cell phone number and told them it would be ready in about an hour. I’d text him a photo when it was done.

(No, I don’t have folks pay in advance. If he didn’t show, I’d put it in inventory and someone else would buy it. I only make them pay in advance if they want a very costly stone or something weird that other folks might not like.)

I sat down to make the pendant.

The Venue

This happened on my second to last day at Tyson Wells in Quartzsite, Arizona. Quartzsite is a weird little desert town 25 miles east of the Colorado River with a year-round population of 3,677 (per 2010 census). I-10 runs right through it, so truck stops — there are four of them — are probably the biggest year-round business. Per Wikipedia:

Quartzsite is a popular recreational vehicle camping area for winter visitors with tourism being the major contributor to Quartzsite’s economy. Nine major gem and mineral shows, and 15 general swap meet shows are very popular tourist attractions, attracting about 1.5 million people annually, mostly during January and February.

Honestly, I think that part of the Wikipedia entry needs an update. While there are still gem and mineral shows and swap meets, that count might be from a few years back. And that visitor count has to be way off. I will agree that there are lots of folks camped mostly out in the desert in January and the population surges to at least 100,000 during the month. (Please don’t get me started on how the sudden influx of 100,000 Facebook users affects cellular internet access here from 7 AM to about 11 PM daily.) Visitors are mostly retirees who stay for a few days or weeks in motorhomes or other comfortable camping rigs, taking advantage of free and low-cost camping on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land that surrounds the town. There are also campgrounds for folks with bigger budgets who don’t mind the parking lot lifestyle to have a full hookup.

An aerial view of the two big January shows in Quartzsite, AZ, shot from the northeast. Tyson Wells is in the foreground and the RV show with its big tent is beyond it. Those white specks in the desert beyond are some of the thousands of RVs camped out on BLM land.

Here’s another shot of the area, this time from the southeast.

All these folks spend their days roaming the shows, the biggest and best of which is Tyson Wells Sell-A-Rama, a 10-day event that begins in the middle of January. Another draw at the same time is the RV show with its huge tent and hundreds of vendors. The two shows are across the street from each other and take place at the same time. Last year I was at the RV show selling jewelry and aerial photos of campsites; this year I’m back at Tyson Wells selling jewelry.

Or trying to.

You see, the people at Quartzsite — especially this year, it seems — are more interested in buying cheap crap than spending a few bucks more to get something artisan made. It’s the Walmart mentality. Why should they pay me $39 for a pair of fine silver earrings that I designed, textured, cut, filed, sanded, shaped, patinated, and then polished by hand when they can get a pair that look kind of like them made in China out of some sort of silvery metal in that buy/sell booth two rows over for $9.99?

Now I don’t want you to think that everyone here is like that. They’re not. But it’s definitely the majority. How many times have I seen a woman ooh and aah over a pair of earrings, lift them out of the display like she’s ready to buy, ask the price (because she apparently can’t read the sign on the display 12 inches away), and put them right back where they were when I tell her? Too many to count.

And these are my “special show prices,” which are $10 less than what I actually sell for on Etsy and at art show venues.

The Stories

And then there are the stories. I’ve been sharing them on Twitter, but I’ll reproduce a few here for the folks who don’t follow me there:

View of the ice cream cone from my booth. My neighbor across the walkway was a bit of a slob.
Woman at my booth facing the booth with the giant inflated ice cream cone on top: “Do you know where they sell ice cream around here?”
Me, pointing: “Maybe under that big ice cream cone?”
Her, all serious: “You think so?”
Me: “Yep.”

(I actually had to lean out of my booth to make sure the ice cream cone was still there before answering her because I couldn’t imagine how she might have missed it. In my location at the corner of an aisle and the center walkway, I became an information booth. The last few days, I just told people I didn’t know where what they were looking for was.)

Old guy walking by with several other old guys and women, talking about how some automated function on his motorhome works: “We’re getting into the 21st Century soon. I have to learn to trust computers more.”
None of his companions mentioned that we’re already 20 years into the 21st century.

(Old people are weirdly dumb sometimes — which worries me because I’m not getting any younger myself. Will I make statements like that? Do I do it already?)

I nearly filled my pendant display while I was there. Every time I taught a wire wrap class, I added another pendant to inventory. Did I mention that I made about as much money teaching how to make pendants as actually selling them?
Woman says to me: “I just started doing wire wrap.”
Husband, looking at my pendant display board with 20+ pieces of my work: “Look. Here are some ideas you can steal.”
Wife looks. “Oh, yes.”
Me: “Why don’t you take a card? There are photos on the website.”

(Although she didn’t catch my sarcasm, I think her husband did. They didn’t stick around and, of course, they didn’t buy anything.)

Man comes up to my display of pendants and runs his fingers over every single one of them. When he’s done, he looks up at me and says, “No burs. Nice work.”
Me, thinking: Gee, thanks. I guess I qualify as a professional. 🙄

(That one really got under my skin. I wonder how much french fry grease he had on his hands.)

This banner got a lot of attention.
Man to wife as they walk past one of my 9×3 foot banners: “Look. You can learn to make jewelry here and put them out of business.”
Me, thinking: Oh, please try.

(These two didn’t even slow down as they walked past.)

Lady looking at one of the stones I have for sale says to me: “How much did you pay for this?”
Me: …
Her: …
Me: “Don’t you think that asking me my costs is getting a little personal?”
Her: “No.”
Me: …
She didn’t buy the stone.

(She also asked how much I’d charge to wrap a stone she brought to me. I told her my price was $39 but I only did flat stones. She’d been looking at a Shiva shell, which can be found elsewhere at the show and is seldom flat.)

Woman takes a photo of a pair of earrings. “I’m sending this to my husband. He’s in the next row. I can’t buy anything without his approval.”
Me: ”That’s unfortunate.”
Her: [blank stare]
She doesn’t buy the earrings.

(I really don’t think she understood my sarcasm.)

A lot of these stories have the same theme: a complete disregard for the skills and/or feelings of an artist/maker. I can’t tell you how many people came to look at my work clearly with the intention of studying it for ideas. (Tip: what do you think Pinterest is for?) How many photos were taken on the sly? How many whispered conversations between two people, one or both of which wore similar (but not identical) wire wrapped stones before walking off without even acknowledging my greeting?

Again, this wasn’t everyone. It wasn’t even a majority. It was just enough to get under my skin.

And I generally have very thick skin.

Please Respect Artisans

There are two kinds of sellers in this world: sellers who sell what they make and sellers who sell what someone else makes.

An Example

Okay, so these aren’t silver earrings, but they’re a good example of my process. I obtained some coin punch outs from a guy who makes coin rings. I tumbled them to clean/burnish them, then drilled a hole in them and filed down the rough edge created by the drill. Then I used double loop wraps on antiqued copper wire (which I antiqued myself in advance) to attach them to a golden sheen obsidian bead. I attached that to a pre-made hypoallergenic niobium ear wire. They’re cute and they have a story. The entire process takes about 30 minutes per pair and I sell them for $19 at shows.

People look at these and they think of the material costs for the coin punch outs, metal, beads, and ear wires. But do they think of the tumbler, pound of mixed stainless steel shot, and burnishing fluid I needed to polish those coin punch outs? Do they think of the center punch and drill and drill bits I needed to drill the hole in each coin punch out? Do they think of the container and chemicals and polishing cloth I needed to antique the wire, stop the antiquing process, and then polish the shine back into the metal? Do they think of the three types of pliers I needed to make the double wrap loops that hold the coin punch, bead, and ear wire together? My investment in equipment alone for this small job exceeds $300. How many pairs of earrings should I need to make to recoup that cost?

And doesn’t my time have any value? Or the time I spent learning and practicing the skills these earrings required me to have?

Sellers who sell what they make — artisans — have a certain level of pride in their work. That pride, along with their skills, equipment cost, materials cost, and selling costs, are what make up their price.

Maybe I can take $3 worth of silver and turn it into a pair of earrings that I sell for $39/pair. But that $3 materials cost doesn’t include the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on jewelry classes to learn how to make jewelry (and the related travel/lodging expenses), tools and jewelry making equipment, show equipment and displays, show fees, and show travel/lodging expenses. It doesn’t include the hours of practice (and the silver I’ve had to scrap when I didn’t get it right on the first or second (or third) try) and the time it took to form each individual component of the earrings and put them together. And it doesn’t include the pride component — coming up with a new design, pulling it off in such a way that I know it’s good, knowing people will like it and buy it and that it has real value beyond $3 worth of metal.

If you, as a buyer, like those earrings a lot but don’t think they’re worth $39, that’s your problem — not mine. I’m not going to adjust my prices to make you happy. If you won’t buy them, someone else who possibly values them more than you do will. My prices are not outrageous and everything I make eventually sells.

And that’s what I’m telling myself this week, at the end of this rather disappointing show. My next show is an art show where people value the work of artisans. I’ll sell at my regular retail prices and make a lot more money in three days for my work than I made in 24 days at Quartzsite.

The Pendant

Here’s the finished pendant. You can see my reflection in the rock’s surface; I did a great job polishing it.

Now although my dealings with the biker dude at the beginning of this typically long post weren’t as pleasant as I would have liked, I did my best to create a nice pendant for him in the style he wanted. The stone was kind of thick, so it required a frame of at least four wires (instead of my usual 3; and it might have benefited from five). I didn’t hesitate to use that extra silver. And I made the swooping wire with loops at the end, despite the fact that it required me to attach those swoops to the frame in what’s become a popular but still challenging to pull off decorative flourish. (It’s getting easier every time I do it.) The finished piece looked pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. I polished it up, took a photo, and texted it to him.

He and his companion — the one I probably owed a commission to for talking him into it — arrived just a few minutes later, just as I was packaging it to go. I put the silver chain in the packet. “We love it,” she told me. He seemed to agree. He paid me without comment — I think he was embarrassed — and I handed it over to them. Happy ending all around.

But it was especially happy for me because I stuck to my price and still made the sale. I didn’t let someone disrespect me by convincing me to sell my work for less than I wanted. I was making him a custom pendant. Imagine how bitter I would have felt if I’d done it for less than I thought it was worth? Do you think I would have done as good a job? I’m not sure.

The Easiest Path

I admit that I’m in an enviable position as an “artist.” I put that in quotes because I don’t make my living as an artist — and that’s the basis of my enviable position. I’m not desperate for sales. I can afford to come to a venue like Tyson Wells in Quartzsite, pay a bunch of money for a booth and campsite, and not sell a thing. That would hurt my pride a lot more than my financial standing.

I signed up for my booth at Quartzsite this year for three reasons:

It was easy. Let’s face it, traveling around and setting up a show booth for just two or three days, and then tearing it down and moving on gets old if you do it a lot. It’s especially tough when you’re dragging around a trailer and have to worry about where you’re going to spend the night during the show. I did two consecutive shows at Tyson Wells and was able to set up at the beginning and then open my booth on my own schedule for the next 24 days.
It included a full hookup for my camper. I was able to park all of my equipment: truck, camper (off the truck), and utility trailer/mobile shop in my double-sized site with my show tent in the front corner. Not only was I able to tap into power to run my fridge and use the microwave, etc., but I also had the convenience of being able to dash into the camper to use my own toilet or heat up some lunch during the day. I was also able to bring power into my shop trailer without running a generator, making it easy to use my printer, heat up my pickle pot, and charge tool batteries.
One of my best friends was there. Janet is my best non-Wenatchee area friend and I like to spend time with her. We do a nearly three-mile brisk walk every morning and have a glass or wine and/or dinner together most evenings. She gives me advice about doing shows — which she has been doing as an artist for at least 30 years — and can be relied on for an opinion when I try to make something new and different. I only see her during the winter months and I like to maximize the time we can spend together.

If any one of these things didn’t apply, I probably wouldn’t have come to Tyson Wells for two shows this year.

Going Cheap

My friend Janet did well at this show selling note cards with prints of her original artwork on them. They were priced at $3 and she sold enough of them to make every day contribute to her bottom line. She told me that I need something like that and I agree. But I make jewelry and I’m at a total loss for something I can make and sell at a profit for under $10. Right now I have two items priced at $9 (copper rings which are a pain in the ass to make and novelty keychains made from license place letters) and neither one is a big seller.

The answer, of course, is to go the buy/sell route where I’d buy some sort of mass-produced item and sell that among my handmade things. We agreed on a specific relatively popular jewelry item that I can buy at wholesale pretty cheap and sell at enough of a profit to be worthwhile. But to me, that seems like a “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude. How could I justify stocking this item when everything else in my booth is handmade by me? It just doesn’t feel right to me.

But I have to consider the drawbacks, too.

Sales were disappointing. I haven’t totaled up my results yet, but I know they’re off from where they usually are, even at the worst art show venues I’ve attended. I like to tell myself that I’m paying for the campsite more than the booth and I really think that’s true.
Shoppers wanted cheap finds. They seemed more interested in buying items under $10 or $20 than quality items that might cost a little more. This is the main reason I think Quartzsite is the wrong venue for me.
Too many shoppers were obnoxious. Maybe my skin is thinner than I thought, but when I can sit in my booth on one day and make a list full of items like the ones I tweeted (and shared above), I’m certainly not being too sensitive — especially when I consider how seldom I experience this at other venues. This really ate away at my self-esteem and generated unhealthy anger.
I had to run my booth by myself. While I always man my booth alone, I seldom have to do it every single day for 24 days straight. It’s okay to leave for a few minutes — I did’t lose any inventory — but shutting down for longer breaks is not a good idea. Still, I quickly learned that there were very few shoppers early or late most days so I wound up opening around 10 and closing before 4.
I was unable to get much work done during the day. This is partially my fault. If I’d set up my space differently, I might have been able to get work done in my shop trailer while keeping an eye on my booth. So rather than work on projects that required soldering and hammering, which I had to do in the trailer, I stuck to making more pendants, bracelets, and simple earrings. By the end of the day, I was hot and tired and didn’t feel like working on anything new.
The dust got into everything. Despite watering down the walkway around my booth every day, the light gravel surface is embedded with dust that gets into everything. After a while, I just felt as if everything was coated with a grit that I’d never get rid of.
My space was just big enough for me to park my trailer, camper, and truck and squeeze in my 10×10 show tent.
I was depressed and that depression worsened as time went on. The depression was triggered by a tragic event that I’ll discuss in a future blog post. All I can say is that if Janet wasn’t around to comfort and support me, I would have been lost. I’m dealing with it but I’m also dealing with what I call “The Quartzsite Effect.” That’s the way I feel when I spend too much time in Quartzsite, especially if I’m shoe-horned into a tight campsite like I am at this show. I need to see the horizon, to watch the sun rise or set once in a while. I need quiet and privacy. I figure I’m good for a maximum of two weeks in Quartzsite. I’ve been parked here for nearly a month and I feel almost like a caged animal.

Here’s an aerial view looking straight down at Tyson Wells Sell-A-Rama on the morning of January 25, 2020. My space is marked in red.

When I put all of this together, I can’t deny the truth: Quartzsite is easy but it’s not right for me. The easiest path is often not the best.

Next Year

I had been debating with Janet about whether I should do this again next year. I was thinking I shouldn’t but she was trying to convince me to try again. In the end, it didn’t matter. I’d already decided I had no interest in being in the same spot (or even row) I was in. I wanted a spot in Janet’s row, which had a lot more foot traffic because it had more vendors. But when I went to the office to see what was available in that row or something equally good, I was told that all of the spots were already reserved. The decision was made for me.

I’m putting my name on a waiting list but really don’t care if they call me or not. This is not the right venue for me and it’s time to move on. Not being able to get a good spot in next year’s show might be the prodding I need to try something else.

And that’s probably what’s best anyway. I’ve been coming to Quartzsite almost every year for the past 20 years. It’s only recently that I’ve begun spending a lot of time here. Maybe enough is enough.

A(nother) Short Story about the State of US Healthcare

Posted on June 10, 2019 by Maria Langer

Who wants a “pre-existing condition” these days?

I thought I’d take a moment to share a few recent thoughts related to the healthcare situation in the United States.

I’m in my late 50s now and have, for the first time, begun spending a lot of time doing close work with my hands. Making jewelry with fine wire and small tools doesn’t put a lot of strain on my hands, but it apparently does work the muscles and joints more than I’m accustomed to.

Arthritis runs in my family. I clearly remember my grandmother on my mother’s side, who lived to be about 90, complaining about it once in a while. She had typical “old lady hands,” that included thick knuckles and crooked joints under wrinkled skin. She’d spent nearly a lifetime doing close work with her hands in a garment factory, starting work when she was as young as 13 and working until many years later when my grandfather had a stroke and she had to stay home to care for him.

I’ve had knee problems on and off throughout my life. They always got worse when I was heavier and disappeared when I lost a lot of weight back in 2012. But before they disappeared — back when I had a lot of disposable income and a decent health care plan — I went to a doctor about it. Arthritis, he said, pointing at the x-rays.

Handxray
X-ray of a hand from Wikipedia. I’ve got my own x-rays around here somewhere.

More recently, a fall off the back of my truck that sprained an ankle apparently fractured some bones in my left wrist, which I’d landed on. While trying to diagnose the occasional swelling and severe pain (caused by “floating bodies,” we later discovered during arthroscopic surgery that removed most of them), the doctor took x-rays. He pointed out the early signs of arthritis in my wrists and hands.

So yeah. I have arthritis.

It’s gotten to the point that it’s starting to bother me enough to seek medical solutions that don’t necessarily include painkillers. (I can take Vitamin I (ibuprofen) without a doctor telling me to, and I’m not interested in anything stronger.) Would exercises help? CBD creams (as everyone keeps telling me)? Heat or ice therapy? Vitamin supplements? I’m not interested in querying Dr. Google because we all know that there’s enough bad advice there to drown out the good advice. I want to visit a doctor, have her take new x-rays, and tell me what I can do to slow the progression of this very common problem.

And here’s the rub.

If I go to an arthritis specialist — provided I can get an appointment with one — I’m making a very public (on my medical records) statement that I have a medical problem bad enough to seek medical help. In other words, I’m admitting I have a condition that, once admitted, becomes a “pre-existing” condition for future health care coverage.

Now, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, AKA “Obamacare”), as it was passed by the government and enacted into law, pre-existing conditions didn’t matter. But things are different now.

Let me tell you another story about pre-existing conditions prior to the ACA.

Years ago, when I was very heavy, I was having digestive issues that included GERD, heartburn, acid reflux, and vomiting. To this day, I think it was a hiatal hernia but at the time I was unable to find a doctor to offer any advice beyond “take Pepcid AC.” Back in those days, I made the fatal error of mentioning “chest pain” as a symptom. As you might imagine, that triggered a flurry of heart tests, all of which came back negative. I did not have a heart problem, I had a digestive problem. I blogged about this in detail way back in 2010.

This profit-driven nonsense established me in medical records with a “pre-existing heart condition” that didn’t exist. All of the tests came back negative! So when my idiot wasband lost his job (again), made a late COBRA payment, and got our health insurance canceled, the insurance company refused to cover me when they started the insurance back up. I had a “pre-existing heart condition,” they said.

For six of the scariest months of my life, I had no health insurance because a couple of greedy doctors put me through a battery of unnecessary heart tests and an idiot couldn’t manage his money properly. It wasn’t scary because of my health. It was scary because if, during the time I was uninsured, I got some kind of real negative health diagnosis (think cancer) or had an accident at home (think falling down the stairs) that put me into the hospital or long term treatment, I could lose everything I owned. Medical bankruptcy is a real thing here in the United States and I was set up to become a victim.

I got limited insurance coverage back and later got my own damn insurance again so I didn’t have to worry about an idiot screwing things up for me. The ACA really helped things; it was as if those old medical issues simply didn’t exist. And, so far, I haven’t had insurance denied because of these things — although the rate has gone up dramatically since Trump took office. Next year, who knows?

So here I am in 2019. I have arthritis in my hands and want help to prevent it from getting worse quickly. But I’m afraid to make an appointment with a specialist because I’m afraid to get the condition on my medical records. So instead, I’ll keep waiting, letting the condition likely get worse. All because I don’t want to be denied insurance coverage in the future.

Is it right? Does it makes sense? No and no. But there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it other than emigrate to a country with decent health care for all. And believe me, I’ve been thinking about it.

So that’s my situation as I type this.

At least the CBD cream smells nice.

The Dancing Cow

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Maria Langer

A fable as told by Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins is back in theaters. The current movie is a sequel — not a remake — after all, how could they even think of remaking a perfect classic? — but it did get me thinking about the original. I was three when it came out in 1964 so if I saw it then, I don’t remember. I did see it sometime when I was a kid. And I saw it again recently, when I spied it on some streaming service and decided to settle down for a little fantasy from my childhood.

There was a movie a year or two ago with Tom Hanks playing Walt Disney and wooing Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers to get the rights to make a movie. I didn’t see that movie, but it did get me wondering about the book the movie was based on. So yesterday, when I was browsing the audiobook selections at my public library and saw the original Mary Poppins book available, I borrowed it and downloaded its files to my phone, along with a half dozen other audiobook titles. Although I started to listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, I quickly realized, as my mind kept wandering, that I cared very little about quarks and bosons. I needed something light that would pull me in with a story line. Mary Poppins was just the ticket.

So yes, as I drove southeast through Washington and Oregon in an 8,700-pound truck with a 4,400 pound camper with gear on top of it, I listened to a female British voice actor read Mary Poppins to me.

The book was different from the movie. In it, Mary is terribly vain and not especially nice. She does have that magic carpet bag, though. Bert is in just one chapter and doesn’t ever seem to meet the children. Jane and Michael have twin baby siblings, John and Barbara, who aren’t even a year old for half the book. Mr Banks is cheap but there’s no bank scene. There’s no chimney sweep scene, either (Bert is a street artist and a match seller). There are other scenes, though, that never made it into the movie and that’s what this post is all about.

You see, in one chapter, Mary Poppins told a story about a cow and I found a moral in it. I’m not sure if that’s what P.L. Travers intended, but I suspect it was. The moral had nothing to do with the rest of the story in the Mary Poppins book — at least not as far as I can tell.

Let me tell you a short version of the story.

The Story

There’s a cow called the Red Cow. She lives in a great pasture with the best grazing. Every year she has a Red Calf and she takes care of it. Her life is routine and blissful and she’s happy.

Then one day she starts dancing and she just can’t stop. She can’t sleep, she has trouble eating, and she can’t even properly take care of her Red Calf. While it isn’t exactly unpleasant, it’s definitely inconvenient and is disrupting her idyllic life. Not knowing what else to do, she decides to go to the king for help.

The king sees her dancing and commands her to stop. She can’t. Then he notices that she has a star caught in one of her horns. The courtiers try to pull it off. When that doesn’t work, the king tells one of the courtiers to look up a solution in an encyclopedia hidden under the throne. There’s no reference to a dancing cow, but there is a reference to a cow jumping over the moon. So the king tells her to jump over the moon. There’s some nonsense about her being a proper cow and cows don’t do that but she really isn’t given a choice. So she jumps over the moon.

On her way down, the star falls off her horn and drifts away. She lands in her own pasture where she’s greeted by the Red Calf and promptly pigs out on all that good grazing. She’s happy again.

But not for long.

She feels as if there’s something missing in her life and she connects it with the star. She enjoyed the dancing, even though it was a bit of an inconvenience. She wishes another star would come down and get stuck on her horn, but that doesn’t happen. So she goes to Mary Poppins’ mother to ask for advice. (That’s how Mary Poppins knows the story.) Mary’s mother says that stars fall down all the time, but seldom in the same spot. She’s not likely to catch one again in her own pasture.

And that’s when the Red Cow realizes that the best way to catch another star is to leave her comfortable pasture.

The Moral

It’s the moral of the story that really hit home for me, especially today. I spent the past week packing for a trip that would last two to three months. The whole time, I’d be living in my truck camper, often parked out in the desert without a power, water, or sewer hookup. Sometimes, I’d be so far off the grid I wouldn’t even get a cell signal. Although I don’t mind it at all — in fact, I rather like the challenge of living like this for a while every year — it’s not nearly as cozy and comfortable as my home.

And that’s what I was thinking about as I packed and did laundry and had a long, hot shower, and used the dishwasher and had super fast internet access and slept in a warm, cozy bed. That’s what I was thinking about throughout the day every day when I looked out the windows at the changing season on display.

Here’s what it looked like from my north-facing windows the other morning. It’s hard to leave a view like this behind.

I was so comfortable at home. Out on the road I faced the real possibility of being cold at night and not having a good shower for quite a while. Laundry meant a laundromat, dishes would be washed by hand, I’d have to go outside and start up a generator — thus breaking the marvelous silence of the world around me — just to use the microwave.

What was I thinking? Why in the world would I want to leave my nice comfortable home for a less comfortable and often inconvenient life on the road?

I knew why: I love to travel, I love to be on the road, I love to visit with friends and see new things and go new places. And I love visiting a few places I’m very fond of. I love the freedom of a life on the road: coming and going as I please, changing plans as I see fit, making it up as I go along.

I love nights like tonight: parked in a mostly deserted state park campground on a river, sitting on my camper’s bed, typing a long overdue blog post into a laptop, glancing up through the skylight every now and then to watch the moon play hide and seek with some clouds. I like sipping a glass of wine and thinking about my day — rather than tuning into a television that distracts me from my own thoughts — and wondering what the next day will be like.

I could be the Red Cow, content in her comfortable home. But I’d rather get out and see if I can catch and hold a star. Even a modest little star that makes life different or special.

On the Cusp

I’m on the cusp of another major life change and it feels good. Exciting, uncertain, terrifying, challenging. I won’t say more now but I will say this: I’m pretty sure it was my brush with death back in February that has pushed me into thinking about another path to find and follow.

Understand this: at about 5 AM on February 24, 2018, I really thought I was going to die. I should have died. But I didn’t. I was the luckiest person on the planet that morning.

The lesson I took away from the experience was one I already knew: life is short. Don’t waste time doing shit you don’t like doing. Or shit you’re bored with.

I’m getting bored and it’s time for another change.

One Reason Independent Bookstores are Failing

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Maria Langer

A quick story about a visit to a bookstore.

Yesterday, I spent much of the afternoon in Ellensburg, WA. Although less than 30 air miles from my home, it’s a 77-mile drive that takes about 90 minutes. Needless to say, I need to have a reason to go there when I do and I want to make the most of my time while I’m there.

Yesterday’s mission was to check out a gallery where I hope to show and sell my jewelry. That part of the trip went reasonably well, despite the fact that the person I needed to see was not there. It also led to me checking out a nearby museum that might also be a good place to sell my jewelry and two shops that I didn’t think were a good match at all.

I listen to NPR (National Public Radio). Say what you will about “liberal media” but NPR’s shows are intelligent, thoughtful, and informative. The local station, which goes by the name of Northwest Public Broadcasting (NWPB), is turned on in my kitchen almost all day every day. One of its sponsors is a bookstore in Ellensburg — the town apparently has at least three — and since I’m normally a bookstore lover and want to support NPR, I thought I’d go check it out.

I first went into the wrong bookstore, which was small but neatly stocked with new books, cards, journals, and gift items of interest to readers and writers. I wound up buying a book about vegetable gardening that basically provides a calendar-based schedule for garden tasks. (I hardly ever walk out of a bookstore empty-handed.)

I was actually leaving town when I caught sight of the bookstore that actually supported NWPB. I parked and went in.

Browsing disorganized old books might be fun if you have an unlimited amount of time and the place is air conditioned. Or maybe not even then. (And no, this photo is not from the bookstore I visited. It’s a stock image from MorgueFile.)

This was not at all what I expected. The space was larger than the other shop but it was mostly full of dusty used books. I admit to flashing back to a used bookstore I used to visit in the 1980s way down near the financial district of Manhattan. That shop was smaller, more crammed, and dustier. Walking into this shop was like walking into the disorderly garage of someone who happened to collect old books. I realized immediately that there would be nothing of interest to me there, but I figured I’d give it a browse.

The guy behind the counter looked exactly like a stereotypical gamer or computer hacker. Perhaps in his 30s, he looked as if he might live in his mother’s basement, where he spent way too much time interacting with a computer screen. He asked me if I was looking for anything in particular and I told him I was just checking the place out because I’d heard about it on NPR.

“I remember when the lady from NPR came over,” he said. “The bookstore across the street used to be a sponsor. She came over here and told us he didn’t want to support the liberal media anymore. So she asked if we’d take his spot and my dad was here and said we would.”

I hadn’t seen the bookstore he referred to. The one I’d gone to was on another block.

As I looked at the old books, I got a bit of a brainstorm. Years ago, for my birthday or Christmas or some other gift-giving occasion, my wasband had bought me two Mark Twain first editions. He’d remembered me saying that I wanted to build a library of “nice quality books,” and thought (for some reason) that meant expensive first editions. So he’d gone to a bookstore probably a lot like the one I knew in lower Manhattan, and had bought two books that may have cost him hundreds of dollars. Book that looked just as old and dusty as the ones all around me that afternoon in Ellensburg, books I was afraid to open because I might damage them.

I wanted very badly to sell them but didn’t know of any bookstores that bought and sold collectors items.

This one might. So I asked if they ever bought first editions.

The shop guy seemed to search the database in his head for an answer. “Well, it depends on the topic and whether it’s in demand and — ”

“Mark Twain,” I said, trying to cut to the chase.

“You want to buy them?” he asked, obviously not understanding what I was getting at.

“No, I want to sell them.”

He looked uncomfortable.

“I don’t have them with me,” I said.

He relaxed.

“How about if I send you more information about them and you let me know. I can send titles and dates and photos of the covers and title pages. Just give me your card and an email address.”

“Okay,” he said. And he went back to his desk. I assumed he was getting a card.

I browsed. The book sections did have labels on them, but the books within each section were not in any order at all. So, for example, when I checked out the Art section, topics bounced from photography to painting to crafts to photography to architecture to painting… You get the idea.

It was taking a long time and the shop was hot. There was no air conditioning and it was nearly 100°F outside. When I left a little while later, I realized that it was cooler outside than inside.

I wandered back to the desk. He was writing something at the bottom of a sheet of notebook paper. It was taking a long time.

“All I need is your email address,” I said.

“Well, I’m just trying to redo the website right now,” he said. “I want to set it up so I can update it and it won’t cost so much money. So I’m putting in these forums and I want to use that for company communication.”

“You don’t have an email address?”

“Well, I do but on GoDaddy, I have to go through all these screens to get to it and they keep trying to sell me stuff and it takes a really long time.”

“Can’t you just set up Outlook or Apple Mail to access your email account?”

He looked up as if I’d just told him that it was possible to use a microwave to boil water right in a coffee cup. “Maybe I could,” he said slowly. I could see the dim lightbulb over his head getting slightly brighter.

Meanwhile, although I was wearing a thin cotton dress I was sweating like a pig. I wanted out of there but I didn’t want to be rude. “Just give me your website address,” I said, holding out my hand.

He went back to writing. About a minute later, he ripped off the bottom of the page and handed it to me. There were five lines: the bookstore’s name, the bookstore’s phone number, the bookstore’s complete street address (minus zip code), an email address, and the complete URL for the bookstore. He had basically hand-written a business card.

I took it, thanked him, and headed for the door otherwise empty-handed. “I just gave out my last business card,” he said to my retreating figure.

“I’ll email you with the book information,” I told him. And I walked out into the relief of a hot breeze.

Much later — this morning, in fact, as I looked over the torn-off notebook sheet I took out of my pocket — I thought about the death of bookstores. Unless this one had a solid client base, it wasn’t long for this world. How could it be? Not only did it have to compete against Amazon, the bane of all bookstores, but it had to compete against bookstores that actually had a clue about how to draw shoppers in, display a variety of interesting products, and sell things other than dusty old books.

Will I email him about my Mark Twain books? Heck, why not? You never know. I sure hope he tries Outlook for email because there’s no way in hell I’m going to participate in one of his forums.

—

Postscript: In searching the web for a public domain image I could use with this blog post, I stumbled across this article on Narratively: “Dear Dusty Old Bookstore.” If you have a greater love for old bookstores than I apparently do, you owe it to yourself to read it.

A Word about Life after Stress

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Maria Langer

That whole thing about a weight being lifted off your shoulders? It’s true.

This past week, I’ve been stressed out a lot more than I occasionally get. It had gotten to the point where I felt an overall malaise that I couldn’t shake, accompanied by an overwhelming desire to give up on all the things I do that contribute to the stress that was making me feel so crappy.

And that’s never a good thing.

The Check Ride Stress

Quick Note:
I know that in the grand scheme of things — comparing my sources of stress to the sources other far less fortunate people face every day — I shouldn’t complain. And I’m not. I’ve been in far more stressful situations. The point of this post is not to complain or to gather pity. It’s to share an observation.

The main source of that stress was an upcoming FAA check ride scheduled for Thursday (yesterday). It was my first check ride in my new old helicopter, Mr. Bleu. I take a check ride for my Part 135 certificate every year, so it had been a full year since my previous one. I won’t hide the fact that the Spokane FSDO, which oversees my Part 135 certificate, has been getting under my skin with a series of what I consider to be unreasonable requirements. I’d been pushing back, which is something I’d never had to do with the more reasonable FSDOs and inspectors I’d worked with in the past. This was their big chance to “teach me a lesson.” At least’s that’s what was in the back of my mind as I prepped for the check ride.

But check rides are always stressful to me. You see, I never became a certified flight instructor (CFI) and I never spent 500 to 1000 hours sitting next to new students, teaching them about all the weird aerodynamic issues inherent in a rotary wing aircraft and doing dozens of autorotations every day. I have always lived in a place with amazing weather, operating primarily out of Class G and Class E airspace, so I have trouble remembering silly little (but important) things like weather minimums for the various classes of airspace. I know how to fly and I’ve been called a good stick. But that doesn’t mean I can necessarily meet the requirements of a Part 135 check ride, especially if the examiner is tough or wants to fail me.

Add to that that although I usually prep by flying with someone who works full-time or nearly full-time as a flight instructor, no one like that was available to me. My check ride was scheduled for Thursday but the CFI I’d hoped to fly with beforehand was gone until Friday. So I flew with my friend Woody, who has tens of thousands of hours flying Airbus airliners and a bunch of time flying mostly Schweizer helicopters. He’s a CFI and he’s taken more check rides over the years than there are long, hot rainless days in Arizona every year, but he approaches flying as a pilot instead of as a CFI. While that should be a good thing, I wasn’t convinced that it was a good thing for someone prepping for a check ride. (More on that in a sidebar.)

The stakes were relatively high. I needed to pass the check ride to continue doing charter and air taxi flights. Those account for about 10% of my flying revenue, which isn’t really that much. But a Part 135 certificate means I can say “yes” to just about any flight request, including something as simple as a tour that goes more than 25 miles from a starting point. It sucks when you have to turn down work because you lack the piece of paper that makes it legal. If I failed the check ride, I’d have to redo it. Since I was already in my grace month due to FAA scheduling limitations, that meant I could lose that piece of paper staring August 1. And I already have a flight booked for August 3. Redoing it meant more stress, too.

And did I mention the wind? Winds were forecasted to gust to 22 miles per hour on the date of my check ride. The check pilot was coming from Seattle and there was no chance that he’d reschedule after a 3-1/2 hour ride (each way). (I’d offered to meet him in Ellensburg to save him 90 minutes of that drive, but the wind was forecasted to gust to 37 there, so he agreed to come to Wenatchee.)

So although this was the 15th Part 135 check ride in my near 20 years as a pilot, it was stressing me out.

My R44 Helicopter in the Morning
My new old helicopter, Mr Bleu, parked in its landing zone.

On “making it work”

On my check ride, I was asked to land in a confined space on a hillside. It was a relatively big area — I’ve certainly landed in a lot tighter spaces — and there were no real obstacles, although there were some open range cattle, fencing, and a water tank nearby.

I misjudged the wind. I thought it was light and inconsequential and set up my approach to give me a the best angle of approach. As I came near the landing spot, however, I saw trees blowing and felt the wind buffeting me. Left pedal kept things under control without getting too sloppy.

Still, I decided to go around and approach from a different angle. As I told the examiner as I started going around, “If the helicopter is light, performance is not an issue, and the wind isn’t too strong, I could make this work. But making a bad approach work is probably not a good idea on a check ride.” He agreed.

And that’s the difference between flying as a pilot and flying as a CFI. A pilot flies depending on her skills, the conditions, and her intimate knowledge of the aircraft. A CFI flies depending on the best scenario learned in training. We all know it’s best to land with a headwind and that’s what the CFI will always try to do. But an experienced pilot also knows that you don’t have to fly into the wind if other conditionals make a safe operation possible. In this instance, there wasn’t that much wind and we were light. I knew I could land safely with that right quartering tailwind; I’d done similar landings before. But I also knew that the FAA was more interested in a textbook approach. My going around showed good decision-making skills and the second attempt was a lot smoother with a lot less dancing on the pedals.

The stress affected my ability to sleep. On Wednesday night, I was up for four hours in the middle of the night. Wide awake enough to read my helicopter’s Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) and Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) in bed (on my iPad) without them putting me to sleep. I fell back to sleep at around 3:30 AM and was up again at 5:30. So on Thursday morning, I was facing a check ride with a total of about 5 hours of sleep. Not ideal. I was a basket case by the time I got to Wenatchee Airport with my helicopter to wait for the examiner.

Fortunately, it had a happy ending. I took the check ride starting at about 10:45 AM and did surprisingly well on the oral part, which usually makes me seem like an idiot. As for the flying part, I flew fine but could have made better in-flight decisions at least once. Still, it was good enough for me to pass. So by 12:30 PM Thursday, that source of stress was gone.

The Cherry Season Stress

Another source of stress this week was cherry season. We’d gotten over the hump and it hadn’t rained in a month. (We get paid for standing by, so it isn’t as if we didn’t make any money. We did fine.) But the season was winding down and there was no rain in sight and I had to decide whether to extend the contracts for any of my crew. This came down to a basic math and probability problem: How many acres were left to cover and what were the chances of it raining on all of those acres at once?

Early in the week, I didn’t have the information I needed to make a decision. That was the source of the stress: needing to make an important decision I couldn’t make because I didn’t have the information I needed to make it.

Once my crew left, I couldn’t get them back, so I had to decide at least a few days before they planned to leave. I knew I’d only need to keep one of them around if I needed any of them and I knew which one of them it would be. And I knew he wanted to stay, although his partners back in Arizona wanted him back with the helicopter. The trouble is, if I asked him to stay, I’d have to pay him more standby money. That money was coming out of my pocket and it wasn’t chump change. So the stressful part of all of this was figuring out whether I should ask him to stay before he made unchangeable plans to leave.

Cherry season is stressful.
I should mention here that cherry season is always a very stressful time for me, starting in April, a good two months before the season starts. In April, I’m trying to secure my contracts and get acreage counts so I know how many pilots I need. In May, I’m trying to lock in pilots who are freaking out because I can’t give them exact start dates. In June and July, I’m watching the weather, trying to foresee storms and flight needs, and making sure my pilots don’t wander off. In August, I’m still watching the weather and hoping that I can cover whatever acreage is left by myself. So it’s up to five months of varying levels of stress. August 11 is my last day this year and I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it.

I started getting acreage estimates on Tuesday. By Wednesday, I was able to do the math part with some degree of accuracy. If I let all my guys go, on the first day they were all gone, I’d be right at the limit of the number of acres I could cover alone. If it rained everywhere, I’d be stretched thin. But too thin? And what was the chance of rain?

By Thursday, I was confident that there was no chance of rain for at least three days after the last member of my crew left. By the end of those days, it didn’t matter if it rained because the number of acres left to dry — remember, they’re picking cherries every day now — would easily be within my capability to dry alone.

So the stress from that decision was gone by Thursday, too.

The Tiny Sources of Stress

I have a few other tiny sources of everyday stress in my life.

Jeep air conditioner. It’s on the fritz, making a weird sound when the fan is on medium-high or high. That’ll need to get looked at.
Business planning. Believe it or not, I’m considering starting a new business with a partner here in Wenatchee. This is a huge decision for me and there’s some stress related to the yes/no decision of starting it at all.
Responsibilities. Like most folks, I have the responsibility of owning and managing a home and doing the work I do to make a living. Sometimes it’s more stressful than other times, but if I couldn’t handle that stress, which never really goes away, I should probably sell out, retire, and live in a rest home.

In all honesty, I can’t even count these as “stress,” mostly because they come and go on a daily basis. They’re part of life.

When the Stress Is Gone

What I really wanted to write about here is how I feel this morning. In one word: great!

Yesterday, after my check ride and lunch with Woody and an appointment to get my hair tended to, I rescheduled the business planning meeting I had set for 6 PM to sometime later in the weekend. On my way home from the hairdresser, I shopped at my favorite craft cocktail place and had one of their concoctions. I normally don’t drink at all during cherry season, but with absolutely no chance of rain, I didn’t think it would hurt. And I thought it might help for what I had planned next: sleep.

I was dead asleep by 7 PM. And I stayed that way until 3:30 AM. That’s 8-1/2 hours.

Now most folks probably wouldn’t be happy waking up at 3:30 in the morning. But after a solid night’s sleep, what difference does the time make? I spent some time sitting out on in the cool air on my deck, just looking out at the lights of the Wenatchee Valley. Then, as the eastern sky started to brighten, I went in and made my coffee.

That’s when I realized how good I felt and why: the stress was gone.

And with the stress gone, so was the malaise.

How could I have even considered giving up on the things I do? Running my helicopter services business? Managing over a dozen cherry drying contracts? Caring for and improving my home? Managing Airbnb properties? Making and selling jewelry? Raising chickens for eggs? Keeping bees? Gardening? Polishing gemstones?

And why wouldn’t I dive into a new business venture with a friend?

When I was stressed out earlier in the week, that feeling of malaise was making me question why I was doing any of these things, reminding me that the people whose lives revolve around a dull job and evenings spent watching television don’t get stressed out. The stress comes, in part, from facing challenges. No challenges, no stress.

But what those people don’t realize is that without self-imposed challenges, there’s no real meaning to life. They’re missing out on the amazing feeling of success that comes when facing a hurdle and jumping it.

Because isn’t that what I’m doing?

I wouldn’t have to take that check ride if I didn’t build and maintain a Part 135 helicopter business.

I wouldn’t have to make difficult staffing decisions if I didn’t take on the challenge of managing cherry drying contracts every year.

I make my stress when I take on these endeavors. The stress is usually temporary. And getting past it is what makes me tick, the reward of success is what drives me.

And I feel great today.

An Eclectic Mind

Web site and blog for Maria Langer, writer, video producer, jewelry artist, boat captain, and helicopter pilot. Blogging since 2004.

Category Archives: Deep Thoughts