The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I guess I’ve been working in art for about 35 years. Some of it I’ve been doing okay at, even made a so-called Living at, and most of it, well, I’m not the poster child for Starving Artist, but maybe Anorexic Artist. We artists have a tough row to hoe in corporate America, that’s the truth, and so we try all sorts of strategies ranging from art fair booths to just giving up and getting a job, a real job. But probably too late for one that pays well or offers benefits and pensions. The money belongs to the Job Creators. Us creators, well, good luck.

I went up into the mountains this past weekend with a box of the Skeeter Daddle Blues, hoping to do a book reading and maybe sell a few copies. Ever since my old outlets for book sales dried up, I’ve been headscratching how to market these babies, get them out of my basement and into the hands of folks hungry for great literature. Tyee Store closed up and so did the Copy This Mail That office supply store that sold the first book Skeeter Daddle Diaries so well I ordered a second printing. The South End String Band CD’s sold like hotcakes too at those places, but when they closed shop, the only show in town was the Snow Goose Bookstore. And now they’ve shuttered their doors too. We probably sold two to three thousand CD’s before that. I sold maybe 1000 books. Not bad for a backwash.

This past year I haven’t sold more than ten books and the band is giving CD’s away at concerts for ‘the price we finally figured they were worth’. For free. One concert alone we handed out 150 CD’s.

A high tech, fast charging friend convinced me to try Amazon. Against my better judgement I signed on, figuring I’d be sending them a box of hot sellers they could pass out faster than candy on Halloween. But no, they wanted me to send one book at a time, priority mail, to their warehouse in Maryland or someplace far far away. I spent about $5 per book for mailing envelope and postage, losing a couple of bucks on each one. This went on for a couple of months, never enough sales apparently, to justify shipping them a full box. I might have continued this brilliant sales strategy right into bankruptcy but one day I noticed Amazon, love these guyz, had used copies of the Skeeter Diaries listed at 1.99 plus shipping. This was great. Me competing against me and the only winner was Amazon. It took me awhile to get out of this crummy cycle, the company not really responsive to any inquiries. In fact, they had no way to make inquiries.

I finally just kept sending them messages on the sales requests that the book was Out of Print. Which, finally, it was. Sadly, I buy my own book back from them occasionally just to have a few copies around. Cheaper than reprints by far. Bookstores competing against Bezos, like I mentioned at the last Snow Goose reading before they closed shop, are like Godzilla vs Bambi, it won’t be long before they’re toejam. Now I see where they’d like to be my printer too, print on demand. Probably ship them to me, then have me ship them back each sale. Lose even more money on every point of sale.

So I wish I had a tried and true strategy for you prospective artists out there looking for ways to sell your wares, I really do. It was always dog eat dog, but now we got Godzilla too. My only advice is to be like the little furry creatures during the Dinosaur Era, stay low, keep a close eye out, maybe move at night. I know, not much help, but the trick is to survive.

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Yesterday I drove 60 miles up the Stillaguamish River valley, past the Oso Slide that killed about 70 folks a couple of years ago and into the tarheel town of Darrington for, ironically enough, a book reading given by me, Skeeter Daddle. This gig was sponsored by the local library, a branch of the regional library the mizzus used to work at, the big one that puts on Ted Talks and concerts and such, all those extracurricular to entice the citizenry to view libraries not as museums for Gutenberg, but vibrant places where discourse is aplenty and kids are welcome.

I admit, I had a bad feeling about this, even told the mizzus to stay home and save herself five or six hours of wasted time when the weather was sunny and warm, when we should’ve been picnicking with our fresh caught crab and our newly dug potatoes for potato salad, enjoying a cold adult beverage or six, basking in the lazy hazy halcyon days that are upon us. As I drove up the valley, past the jagged peaks of Whitehorse Mountain and streams filled with glacial melt gurgling into the Stilly, I wondered why the hell I was doing this. There was no remuneration and the possibility of selling a book or two wasn’t going to pay for the gas my truck was using to get there, about ten or twelve bucks, I calculated.

Darrington, even at the height of summer weather, was pretty much a ghost town. I never did see the library that sponsored this gala event, but I did finally find the bookstore and coffee shop where the reading was being held. When I got there the joint was closed, lights off, nobody home. I drove around town some more, made note of the redneck bars I might make use of if this reading had been called off, maybe read to the tarheel transplants some of my little stories about folks quite a bit, possibly too much, like them. I was imagining a story, the last story, with the working title: The Death of Skeeter Daddle.

My reading was at 6. At ten to the owner of the store showed up and we talked while we waited for the crowd. At ten after Larry showed up, ordered an ice tea and we all talked while we waited for the rest of the mob. At about twenty after the librarian who’d arranged this with me showed up and we all three chatted amiably about the state of running bookstores and libraries and such while we waited for the stragglers to show up. At 6:30 we decided this was pretty much the Whole Show.

I guess if you want seconds of Humble Pie, this is how you do it. We all exchanged information about our lives, the kids, jobs, how we got to the place we live, all that stuff strangers introduce themselves with. An hour later the librarian left and Tony was closing shop. I gave him a pile of books and said see if anyone wants to buy them, they’re yours. I handed Larry one too. The box I’d brought just in case the reading public of Darrington was smitten with my excerpts, well, they rode home with me. I stopped along the route home and bought some cold ones. I gotta admit, it was a lonely picnic.

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I had a friend call me up the other day. An intruder – ‘a trespasser’, she called him – had wandered onto her property via bicycle. Armed, she said, with a clipper. Her neighbor had confronted him lopping English Ivy off her fir trees and asked him who he was, did he have authorization for this horticultural blitzkrieg, where was he from and why the Anglophobic hostilities??

My friend was sure if anyone had a hand on the pulse of the South End, if anyone was wired into the grapevine without the use of any social media of any sort, old Skeeter would know who this interloper was.

Indeed. I told her his name, gave her his address, website and phone number and approximate height and weight. More than that, I volunteered his M.O., his modus operandi. “He has a jag about ivy strangling the flora,” I informed her. “Harmless, really, old Clipper Carl. Rides his bike around the South End, usually asks the owner first, but I guess time is running out or the obsession has tightened around his trunk. It’s some kind of botanical fixation. Let’s not call it pathological, just a bit more like a religious calling. NOT that I’m saying Carl hears voices in the night “OUT OUT DAMNED IVY!!” Or that he might mistake a fellow South Ender for a strangler vine. We all have our hobbies. And sometimes we lose ourselves in pursuit of them.

The odd thing is, Carl is very well off, a wealthy retired professional and a big philanthropist. Sure, he could’ve chosen to eliminate poverty or disease on the South End …. but … he chose to eradicate ivy. Not maybe what Bill Gates would’ve chosen, but even Bill gets criticized for not choosing causes WE want most. You can’t really win with a lot of folks.

I was riding my bike by Carl’s property today, the ten acre parcel he bought down the road from his bluff house, the one he has the security camera aimed at the gate he keeps locked, and I noticed all the NO TRESPASSING signs he’d posted for a quarter of a mile on the perimeter. Right where I used to pick cherries and apples before he bought the acreage and warned us off. He doesn’t eat the fruit, I notice, but we can’t either now. I’ve been looking for a new hobby myself in my advancing old age and Carl’s given me something of an idea. Good sharp hatchet, hop on my bike and mosey down to those NO TRESPASSING signs I don’t much care for, I bet they’d come down faster than clipped off ivy vines. Free up those fruit trees to us neighbors.

If anyone would understand, I’m certain Carl would…..

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“At some point, I’m going to be so presidential that you people will be so bored and I will come back as a presidential person.” Our President before he became President.

I think this about sums it up. Why behave like an adult if adulthood is boring? Why act wisely if wisdom will put the American people to sleep? Why be sane if sanity is no fun? Oh, sure, we could have elected a normal person. But why? To solve world problems and help steer the nation into the future? C’mon, that’s so Yesterday. So meat and potatoes. So yawn-inducing. You want position papers and statesman-like pronouncements, get a grip. This is reality TV, tweet-storming excitement.

The man gets up pre-dawn to tweet some new outrage for the lying media to devour. He’s pissed off and he wants some revenge, you don’t get that? You’d like to take it out on the folks who criticize you, wouldn’t you? You bet your toupee you would! He doesn’t give a damn about who gets knocked down, whose feelings get hurt, what cherished value gets broken — and wouldn’t we all love to be the bull in the china shop for once? Judging by the trolls out there in cyberville, I’d say there’s plenty of room for racists and misogynists and haters. They’ve waited their whole empty life for this opportunity. And now they’ve got their role model in the highest office in the land. Yee haw!

If I were one of those yahoos who think government is a bunch of stoopid jerks who screwed up my life, I’d love this guy. He’s a one man wrecking ball. Congress? Oh right, the dumbasses who can’t repeal that terrible Obamacare we all hate? Those guys? The ones who spent the past 7 years tearing their hair out but never put together the replacement plan? Those guys? That government? The one that couldn’t agree on what day of the week it is, much less what month? No, give me the guy who has the guts day in and day out to tweet what idiots they all are. The guy who will bring back coal jobs. The guy who’ll stand up to France and Germany. The man who isn’t afraid to admit he likes the manly Putin more than that dogface Merkel woman. The President who isn’t afraid to change his mind when the mood suits him, just like us! Yaw!!

Let’s just hope he doesn’t get so presidential we’re bored and becomes a presidential person. That’s when we change the channel….

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The 4th of July is here once again, parades and fireworks stands, flags and patriotism, the yearly celebration of the birth of this experiment we call America. I admit, I’m not the most patriotic yahoo in the Land of the Free, certainly not the bravest. I didn’t volunteer to fight in Viet Nam, just watched my lottery number miss by 6 when I dropped my college deferment and realized I wouldn’t be moving to Canada any time soon. I criticized the war in Afghanistan, I sure didn’t like the Iraq War and probably there wouldn’t be any wars coming up that I thought were worth the blood and treasure to fight. World War Two, yeah, I’d have done like my old man and gone over to fight that one, but that kind of war is over now. I hope.

It’s not as if I thought America was that City on the Hill some folks want us to believe. We’ve played pretty dirty on the world stage, assassinated folks we didn’t want in power if they got in the way of corporate interests, overthrew governments for the same reason while at the same time offering up pablum that we were actually supporting democracies, all that stuff that casts doubts on our self-shined reputation as Leader of the Free World. We waterboard, we torture, we do the renditions, we keep Guantanamo open. These are more than blemishes, they’re war crimes.

But along comes this man Trump…. Our fearless leader now. No experience in leadership or governing, no sense that I can see whatsoever. A congenital liar, a bully, a cheap punk in a fat man’s suit with enough money to intimidate his enemies and ruin his competition. A loudmouth idiot you’d hope would get his come-uppance in some Bronx bar after offending the clientele. And lest you think we don’t deserve such a malicious clown, you need to remember we voted for him. America voted for him. America chose him to do … what? Fix the economic inequities that fuel folks’ anger from West Virginia to Arizona? Take care of that immigration mess? Drain the swamp?

Fat chance. You think people were disgusted with government before, get a grip on your hat, the blowback coming next will be a tornado. So when you got your favorite beer in one hand this 4th and a spatula on the hamburgers, ask yourself if this isn’t a great country or what? Me, I’ll be having more than one of those beers. America, you need to wake the hell up.

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