The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright

Remember the scene where Edith finds the secret stash of feminine mysteries? That was my first insight into what it means to be a woman. Other people were too creeped out by the Mr. Bear spanking scene, which didn’t creep me out until I read The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll last year. (Note: if you are thinking about becoming a helicopter parent, read TSLotLD as a serious cautionary tale.)

A Bargain for Frances by Lillian and Russell Hoban.

Hands down, the best book for lil cheapskates. Frances the badger — the same one who rejected veal cutlets and spaghetti and meatballs in favor of bread and jam — trades her nice tea set for one offered by an unscrupulous friend. Also called You Get What You Pay For, Frances and Caveat Emptor, Little Badger.

Minnie the Mump and Other Stories by Paul Tripp and Trina Hyman

This book, issued by a children’s vitamin company, was illustrated in various shades of sickly orange — possibly to evoke the foods an ill child might vomit: Applejacks, American cheese, Tang. It’s a collection of stories about horribly anthropomorphized childhood diseases. Why I obsessed over Minnie the Mump is a mystery. What’s not a mystery: the resulting 30+ years of acute hypochondria. At least no one ever had to remind me to wash my hands.

Wrong. Scrolling through page after page of reader suggestions on Slate made me realize that I got nothin’ to offer in the “Be Efficient! Save Money!” department. My strategy is to keep the heat at 60 and work under three blankets, a cat, and multiple Snuggies. (Note: the Snuggies really don’t add much. Also, one size fits all is a LIE.)

Likewise, in the summer, I spend a lot of my time lying on the basement floor. Let me tell you, after having survived three New York City summers with no A/C, there’s no gift quite as divine as a basement. It helps to have a bottle of gin in the freezer at all times. Preferably, the freezer should be in the basement.

It’s not that I don’t believe in global warming. I do. It’s just that hanging a sheet of plastic over your windows is so hard, and takes so long. Do you know how many episodes of Columbo I could watch in the time it takes to winter-proof my house? Ugh. What a money-saving bore. I’d rather just concentrate on perfecting my boiled flour recipe and patching up the sweater I’ve been wearing since the third grade.

I’m working my way through a stack of professional development books, most of which have to do with the nontraditional routes you can take with an MLIS.

Starting an Indexing Business is a slim volume (82 pages, including the index) that covers the basics: whether indexing is right for you, the business of being in business, how to find work, what to charge, and what kind of professional development options are available to you.

If I decided to pursue indexing, this is the course I might take, based on the book’s recommendations:

• Find an indexing course,
• Join the American Society for Indexing,
• Pin down what my indexing specialties might be (for example, mine might include American history, ancient and medieval history, local history, cookbooks, self-published local interest books, winemaking, humor, biography, and trade publications in library science and archives, since those are the subjects for which I am also most qualified to offer writing and editing services.)
• Find book packagers and special interest groups that match those specialties, and market, market, market my services

Starting an Indexing Business also works as a succinct general guide to starting up as a freelancer, covering the basics of taxes and purchasing liability and disability insurance. (Protect those delicate little fingers!) Based on my experience, freelance indexing is a much lower-risk prospect than freelance archival work, so liability insurance is not as big of an issue. (The bottom line: keep your opinions to yourself and don’t accidentally libel someone in the index.) The most challenging part for me — and for several of the book’s contributors — is marketing. Marketing, though essential, is not the introvert’s favorite activity — even when you’re confident that you’ve got a good product.

My most pressing question — will indexers eventually become irrelevant in the age of e-books and ctrl+F? — didn’t get addressed until the end, and even then, the answer was vague and not terribly reassuring: “In any case, indexers should be aware that the world of publishing is changing.” Although I’m well-suited to indexing (I am an analytical and thematic thinker, I like working solo, I have an uncommon eye for detail, I have experience working with the end user), I am hesitant about acquiring (another) skill that may become obsolete soon. I’ll have to do some more investigating!

Instead of pursuing it, though, I floundered around for a while and eventually went to library school — partly because I have never been particularly good at following my bliss (or even recognizing my bliss!) but also because library school seemed eminently practical.

Not that I regret the opportunities that library school gave me. But now, I’m thinking about how to build on those past experiences, so I’m taking the time to look at programs in folklore and heritage preservation. And the program that’s standing out right now is the M.A. in Folklore at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Here’s why.

As you may know, my professional interests include Rust Belt literature and local history. Despite the fact that some people find the term “Rust Belt” pejorative and objectionable, there is a sort of Rust Belt heritage, a Rust Belt narrative emerging. This place, once the greatest manufacturing region the world has ever known, is now a place where an old culture is giving way to a new one. It unnerves me to think that this shift isn’t getting due attention, that old folkways might be lost, or that the emerging folkways are seen as fads.

What appeals to me about the program at Memorial University is that it’s rooted in a province with a unique culture — one that’s well-studied and celebrated. The Rust Belt is not as well-studied, and the idea of celebrating the Rust Belt is pretty off-putting to some people. If I want to do a formal study of Rust Belt folklore, folkways, or cultural heritage, then starting in a place where the culture is strong and well-documented might be a good option.

Now, of course I’m a little wary of pursuing something so academic, something that may be just as precariously dependent on grant funding and charitable donations and public tax dollars as libraries and archives. But the prospect of carving a unique research niche for myself, to cultivate my expertise in something I think is important, is strongly appealing.

Also notable: Memorial University offers a Heritage Resources diploma with an opportunity to study in England, and some of the lowest tuition and fees in Canada — even for International students. Hey, that’s me!

As with all childhood insults, the origin of “you’re so generic” is difficult to trace, but is undoubtedly rooted somewhere in the distended bowels of contemporary culture. Perhaps it had to do with the beginning of childhood as commodity, the era when Saturday morning cartoons were all based on plastic, vacuum-sealed action figures — after all, what could have been more embarrassing than to ask for a set of Ninja Turtles for Christmas, only to receive a set of Samurai Salamanders? Thanks Grandma. I know you got these at Drug Mart with your Golden Buckeye card.

Or perhaps it was just one last dig at the faltering Soviet Union, the most generic country of all.

Brand loyalty is something that puzzles me, simply because I don’t spend enough time thinking about consumer products to really know the difference between Purex and Tide, or Colgate and Crest, or Coke and Pepsi for that matter. I always just buy the generic brand, or whatever’s on sale, or whatever’s the cheapest. The only exception: Pop Tarts. Toaster Wizards and Frooty Breakfast Slabs just don’t taste the same.

In my worst dreams, those disparaging little cries of “you’re so generic” float up from the cellars of the past, only now the Reagan-era bullies have grown up and become corporate lobbyists, and I fear that the freedom we’re all supposed to work so hard to protect in this country is not the freedom to read and think and practice whatever religion you like, but actually just the freedom to stay brand-loyal.

Now, it’s hard to discuss rampant consumerism without sounding like a humorless, Nader-worshipping conspiracy theorist.* But, as a library patron once reminded me, “sometimes they aren’t conspiracy theories. Sometimes they’re conspiracy facts.”

*I am one of these.

One of the greatest tragedies of modern American life is that “living like a college student” doesn’t mean what it used to mean.

Oh, how I pity the twentysomethings! Those fragile, delicate youngsters who are poised on the Cliff of Becoming, whose smooth, unlined brains haven’t yet settled on the career that will ultimately disappoint them, who actually look forward to being funemployed! Those Kayleighs and Tylers who live in such comfort with their parents, who will never stay up late debating the merits of Top Ramen over Maruchan, who will never scrape around under parking meters after the snow melts, hoping to find enough change to buy those peanut butter crackers in the school vending machine, the ones that tempt and taunt with their alluring orange glow. And why should they? Their moms will give them money if they just ask! Because after all, it’s hard to be a college student these days.

Ah, the times they are a-changin’. Come gather ’round, children, come gather ’round and old Mrs. Garrett will teach you a valuable lesson. (“Who?” you say. Sigh. This lady.)

Picture this: Cleveland, 1997. It was a world that had never heard of Monica Lewinsky, and the Great Recession was just a twinkle in Alan Greenspan’s eye. A 98-lb sophomore at Cleveland State University digs through the garbage can at the neighborhood grocery store where she works. A bruised apple? Looks good. She puts it in her bag. A hunk of moldy cheese? It’s soon wrapped up in cellophane. Ditto the package of week-old bagels. They may be rock hard, but they can be dipped in a bowl of hot tea to form a kind of nutritious — and stimulating — sponge. She hauls the bag of booty out to the bus stop, where she waits for twenty minutes. The bus is late. One of the store managers pulls up, offers her a ride. She shakes her head. “At least take this can of spaghettios. It’s dented, I can’t sell it.” Our sophomore takes it, eagerly. Botulism be damned! The bus comes, and she clambers up the stairs, balances the bag on her lap. She gets off the bus, waits 30 minutes for another bus. Gets off that bus, walks half a mile to her one-room apartment (for which she pays $300 a month in cash), puts her garbage food away, gathers up her linguistics textbooks, and heads back to the bus stop because it’s time to go to her second job.

I’m so sorry that you’ll never have this character-building experience. I mean that, from the bottom of my cheapskate little heart.

At first I thought this was a headline from The Onion. But no — it’s actually true. The Tristanis moved from Miami to Hazelton, North Dakota, in 2006, taking advantage of one of these “psst! sick of urban congestion and crime? we’ve got one foot in the grave and we’ll give you free money and free land if you move here!” deals that have found such favor in the rapidly-emptying spaces of Middle America.

This story interests me from both a creative standpoint and a heritage preservation standpoint. On one hand, what are you supposed to do when you’re a dying rural community? On the other hand:

Michael Tristani came from his native Florida wearing gold necklaces and a Rolex and driving a Lexus. He proved as foreign as a flamingo in a place where pickups, farm caps and flannel shirts are de rigueur.

“People thought I was a drug dealer,” he said.

I want to write a book about this before Carl Hiaasen gets to it. (Seriously, Carl, I’ll fight you for it. Pick your weapon.)

But seriously. The way people relate to their surroundings is something that fascinates me. How people react to outsiders, the often-poignant and sometimes hilarious way people get defensive about where they come from (even when the place is clearly crumbling) — these are themes that I feel acutely in my own life and love to explore in my writing. (Unsurprisingly they’re themes that come up a lot in Rust Belt fiction.)

The tale of the Tristanis also reminds me of when I moved to Montana in 2000. My first experience with Montanans was somewhere between Billings and Bozeman. We’d pulled over to get gas. The gas station attendant eyed our rooftop carrier and Ohio plates suspiciously. “Where you folks headed?” he asked. “Missoula,” we said. “We’re moving there.” He frowned. “It figures. People from The East always go to Missoula.”

Imagine. Ohio — The East!

1. I don’t have a car. This means that when I am working, the money I’m not spending on a car is going toward local businesses – such as the Capitol Theatre, Loganberry Books, and Papa Nick’s. (Keep in mind that according to Chris Balish, author of How to Live Well Without Owning a Car, you can save about $8,000 a year by not having a car. That’s a lot of pizza, antique children’s books, and movie tickets.)

2. Because I don’t have a car, my money would be going to RTA, and strong cities have good public transportation. However, RTA loses ridership numbers (and money) the longer I remain out of the workforce.

3. I pledge to donate 10% of the income that you pay me to local nonprofits.

4. I am happy to pay taxes that pay for essential city services. I live in the city of Cleveland, and a strong city = a strong regional economy.

5. I am a responsible homeowner. If I don’t find gainful employment, I will be forced to sell my house and move. Which means that an irresponsible person could move in and drive down the property values of my neighbors, which in turn could drive down the whole neighborhood.

6. The money I’m not making is money that’s not going to those workers who I would engage to help improve my house. Such as the contractors I would hire to rebuild my missing fireplace, install a new floor, and finish my attic — until I get a job, they’re going unpaid, too.

7. I shop at locally owned stores for 95% of my purchases. If it is not available locally, I usually don’t buy it.

8. My money is exclusively tied up in local banks — not the banks that were “too big to fail.”

9. Tourists spend money! One of my professional specialties is cultural heritage preservation, and I am vocal about promoting cultural heritage tourism.

10. Although I enjoy freelance work, its irregular nature ensures that I don’t spend as much on luxury purchases (such as trips to the Old Angle) as I would if I had a regular income stream.

(Hint: it's Temujin)

One of my greatest strengths is that I have a lot of interests. This comes in handy during pub quiz time, when all that separates me from the waffle-maker is Genghis Khan’s childhood name.

Unfortunately, this is also one of my greatest weaknesses. Now that it’s come time to think about pursuing some serious continuing education or — gads — entering another career field entirely, I find that there are a dizzying array of options.

I recently made a trip to Chicago to visit my friend Mark, a 23-year-old grad student at SAIC. As Mark sat on a couch that he’d dragged out of the garbage, eating a bowl of generic cocoa puffs, I agonized over the sheer number of life choices I could make. After about ten minutes Mark stormed over to his closet in a fit of pique, grabbed a Santa hat, and said, “we’re going to write down all of your options and you’re going to PICK ONE OUT OF THIS HAT.”

I picked one. Then I picked another. “Best out of three,” I said.

In the end we came up with a manageable list of options, which fell into the following categories:

• Digital Libraries and Electronic Records Management
• M.A. in English and TESL certification
• Heritage Preservation, Heritage Tourism, and Public History
• M.A. and Ph.D. in Folklore

All of these options build on education and experience that I already have, but are precariously academic. I think the top two are the most practical options (I keep hearing that there’s demand for postsecondary teachers of English, which makes me look like a douchebag because I spent a lot of time trying to talk one of our interns at the WRHS out of doing an M.A. in English).

So, over the next few months, I’m going to scrutinize, investigate, and weigh the benefits of specific academic programs in each of the above. This is something I wish I would’ve taken more seriously when I was applying to library school (I just picked Kent State because it was cheap.) Any and all suggestions are welcome!

A cheapskate counts his pennies

A few years ago I took the infamous opinion writing for ladies class offered at the Woodhull Institute in New York. At the beginning of the class the teacher went around the room and asked us to name something we were an expert in. Apparently all the other ladies had read the New York Times article and knew what to expect — namely, that women were always too modest to “claim their expertise” — so I was the only one whose answer sounded dubious and mushmouthed.

(Hey, to my credit, this had less to do with being a woman and more to do with the fact that I read encyclopedias for a living and was literally an expert in nothing.)

Since then, I’ve realized there is one thing I can claim to be an expert in: not spending money.

This realization, however, did not come accompanied by a lightbulb. “Aha!” I did not say. “I can write op-ed pieces about this.” Nor did I feel a sudden, saintlike passion to enfold the financially burdened masses unto my thrifty breast.

Instead, I groaned. Not spending money was probably the one thing I couldn’t write about, ever, because listening to obnoxious people drone on about how virtuous they are for giving up their morning lattes and high-powered corporate attorney jobs in favor of earth-toned minimalism is such a downer that I think it is actually unconstitutional.

Besides, I have serious doubts about whether thrift can actually be taught — even amidst the Great Recession. I suspect that most of our latter-day frugalistas are looking for a way to maintain their current stuff-saturated lifestyles, by appearing to downscale their most conspicuous consumption while at the same time, spending as much as ever. (Think Real Simple magazine.)

That said, I’m going to give this a shot. Every Wednesday until I get bored with it, I’m going to post the Cheapskate Evangelist. The Cheapskate Evangelist will just be for fun. The Cheapskate Evangelist will probably do stupid cheapskate tricks like try and spend $15 a week on groceries for a whole month. The Cheapskate Evangelist will never whomp you over the head with the Cudgel of Virtue. The Cheapskate Evangelist honestly doesn’t care if you drop $83 on novelty cocktails and have no savings.

The Cheapskate Evangelist will always hold your hand, but will never judge you.