Marilyn Thiele
In her post earlier this week, Lynne Patrick decided to pass on discussing the miseries of March weather, when Spring gives us a little tease before disappearing behind the clouds and snow. It sounds like the weather in Derbyshire and New Jersey is about the same, so I’ll try to fill the gap. After having a few glorious hours cleaning up my garden on Wednesday (it was only 50 degrees, but felt like a heat wave), I spent today watching the snow come down and hearing that I had better get where I was going before the roads froze over. I kept remembering words from E. J. Copperman’s Chance of a Ghost about the steely grey skies of New Jersey that last from November until the first of May. I can’t quote it exactly because I don’t have the book close by, but his parenthetical “brought to you by the New Jersey Board of Tourism” is typical of his wry look at our state. When I read it I thought he was exaggerating. Today I’m not so sure.
What struck me on Wednesday when I was able to steal a few hours of hard but enjoyable labor was how invigorated I felt afterward. During the winter I suspect that we haven’t quite lost some ancestral need to hibernate despite our evolutionary progress and our technological ability to light the world at all times. No amount of indoor exercise generates the kind of energy I had to keep going and tackle some difficult tasks at my shop when the late afternoon cool-down forced me inside. It has to be the touch of the sun and the smell of growing things. As usual, the weeds were first to claim their space, but I chose to focus on the crocuses, gamely opening their petals in defiance of the calendar.
Some friends have suggested that the extra energy comes from the extra hour of daylight we gained from the change to daylight savings time last weekend. How we lose an hour’s sleep and gain more time is a mystery I haven’t solved. For an early riser like me, the spring time change is no joy; the pink sky at 6 is now the pink sky at 7, an hour of light lost. No, it’s the ability to be outdoors and breathe fresh air without the wind penetrating every layer of clothing to chill the bones, and being able to shed some of those layers, that generates a sense of vitality.
Since I’m supposed to be writing about bookselling rather than the seasons, I will add some observations regarding the effect of weather on sales. When I bought my bookshop, the previous owner told me that January and February were the slowest months. I thought this had to be wrong; what else is there to do but curl up with a good book on a cold night? But it’s true; if people are reading in the dead of winter, it’s all the books they got as Christmas gifts. They aren’t shopping much. Thursday of this week, the day after the fake spring, when the gloom and cold had returned, there was a carryover effect. The local high school had a half day, for a teachers’ “in service” session. (These are normally full days for teachers and a day off for students, but in order to make up time lost in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, they are keeping the students in class just long enough to call it a school day.) That afternoon I had a store full of teenagers, something that hasn’t happened since early fall. The combination of a hint of spring and an afternoon of freedom had them looking for new reading material. Listening to them discussing books and making recommendations to each other gave me hope again for the future, especially when they talked about how much better a physical book feels than an electronic device. I sensed that they, too, were awaking, re-energized, from a long slumber.
The forecast is for another week of grey skies, cold temperatures, snow and ice. Maybe if I take the fake snow and stuffed snowmen out of the windows, get out the spring flower decorations, and make a display of gardening books, I can fool myself and generate some liveliness. Or maybe I’ll just curl up with a good book.
Posted by: |