Nashville's Parnassus Bookstore

Hooray! We have a new bookstore in town! Hooray for Parnassus Books!

When Davis-Kidd closed we were saddened, but had to admit to ourselves we'd been of no help to the bookstore ...

When it moved from the Grace's Plaza location to the Green Hills Mall storefront, sure, the parking was way better but somehow it had lost its special "bookstore feeling." Not sure why that was ... but having the bulk of the store and its Brontë restaurant down in the basement was not as inspiring somehow as when it was on the 1rst and 2nd floor levels over at Grace's ... and there just wasn't any sunlight streaming into the shop like there'd been at the old location. It also didn't help that for a while there Chris had been laid off, so we would go and browse at D-K but were simply unable to purchase anything. Terrible thing is, I've sacrificed plenty of lunch money on books, but at that time there just wasn't "lunch" money to spare.

So after they'd closed and the hub-bub started up about writer Ann Patchett opening up a bookstore in Nashville, Chris and I made a conscious decision to be actively supportive of our new local bookstore.

Yeah, sure we love Amazon and its convenience, and the other local used bookstores where you can find out of print stuff, and our favorite little specialty bookshop Mysteries and More ... but golly, we're happy Parnassus Books is here! There's really nothing like walking into a bookstore and looking at stuff ... holding a real book in your hands, smelling the paper and ink within, enjoying the sight of the beautiful colors of the illustrations, or the feel of the matte laminate effect (when applicable!) on the cover ... (yes, am I a book production geek or what?!)

If you haven't had a chance to get over to the Greenbriar strip mall at Green Hills (that's the one near Hillsboro H.S. -- where Donut Den lives! YUM-MY!!) do go! Besides enjoying the donuts, and then the Books at Parnassus, you can also stop by Ten Thousand Villages and visit the new location of the Green Hills branch of the LeQuire Gallery...!

The Muppets and their new movie

Yep. I'm one of those kids who grew up watching Sesame Street ... I'm also a huge fan of The Muppet Show. When I saw the trailer for their new movie (actually the many trailers, since they did parody their own parody) and thought at first it was a simple story between humans Amy Adams and Jason Segel, I was totally going to see it just because I thought they made such a cute couple in a movie. So when I found out it was a MUPPET movie they were in (!!) I knew we HAD to see it.

On opening day, at the first showing -- along with all the little kids and their parents -- Chris and I splurged (since the last time we'd gone to the theater to see a movie was to see Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo.) and saw The Muppets.

I love this movie sooooooo much, Chris got me the soundtrack for Christmas. So here, I must share with you one of my very favorite songs, "Man or Muppet":

Struggling to make art ... and Praying For Strangers by River Jordan

It has been a very trying period of time ...

Just when I hoped I could get better and finer focus on creating my comics and artwork, I get slammed with OTHER. VERY. VERY. IMPORTANT. THINGS. THAT. MUST. GET. DONE.

More frustrating: I'd rejoined the Tennessee Art League and had even bought several canvases to start painting again ... I'd bought them at a great sale at Jerry's Artarama last fall and had even followed up on my prep by taking two terrific acrylic and oil paint classes (on how do these mediums work, what can you do with them, how to mix them, etc.,) at Plaza ... [btw, there's another canvas and easel sale at Jerry's Artarama -- 30% off -- this weekend January 27-28-29 at their Nashville location should you need that sort of thing!!] I was wanting to continue drawing the comics, (especially since I'm still working on the Graffiti graphic novel) but also start painting again. I used to paint more when I was younger but then I discovered comics, and they were just more fun to create. Plus I didn't have to justify my work by additionally making silly, high-falutin' artistic statements of Why I Make What I Do ...!)

Alas.

There are bills to be paid and other books to be made first. Long story as to all the reasons why the drawing and painting are temporarily sidelined, but the main one is because my hubby, Chris, is starting podcasts of his stories and books next month, and we gotta get his books back online in a digital format for more readers to enjoy.

There is huge prep work involved ... and covers to be re-designed and etc., thus making my personal artwork output slow down to less than a crawl. That's the weird advantage to having both left- and right-brain skills/access. I am a fiend for scheduling and administration besides drawing and painting. Although I find lately I become VERY CRANKY and am unable to sleep well when I'm unable to draw/paint daily like I had been doing ... (Seriously. I totally had a meltdown yesterday.) So my administration days will give way to supervision of administration and full-time making artwork very soon, God Willing.

MEANWHILE, in the midst of this frenzy of work, I'm also reading LOVELY books and watching both wonderful and hilarious things (which I will blog about in separate posts today, because I simply must!)

For Christmas one of my sisters gave me a copy of River Jordan's Praying for Strangers. Ms. Jordan lives in town and I'd actually met her several years ago at a book signing for one of our friends, writer Eric Wilson. At the time I was introduced I had no idea what Ms. Jordan wrote about. I just knew she was friendly, really pretty and seemed really nice and wrote books, and was at our friend's signing to show her support, so I thought that was really cool of her. About a year later, it turned out our new next door neighbor was a HUGE fan of hers, and told us often how much she enjoyed Ms. Jordan's Gothic southern-set novels, and would go to all of her book-signings in town ... so her name kept coming up.

Fast forward to this past fall: I caught John Seigenthaler's A Word on Words on a Sunday morning when we didn't get to church. I caught the October episode where River Jordan was a guest, talking about Praying For Strangers. Literally. It was her New Year's resolution to pray for a stranger daily -- and here's the wonderfully crazy part -- she would also TELL the stranger that she would be praying for them that day. The reactions they had to her were amazing, and inspiring ...

The podcast on the episode is still online at the WNPT site -- it's episode 4o12. I was so amazed and touched by River's (I have to use the familiar for a moment -- what a great name! ) resolution that I told my sister about it, and she went and bought me the book. It is lovely. If praying for others is something you're ever thought about doing (& yeah, okay, maybe you're not ready yet to actually TELL the person you see needs it that you're praying for them!) I recommend you listen to the podcast and check out the book.