Monday, September 4, 2017

Labor Day

Today I slept until about 8:30 (In Brendon's bed - he was on a cot in another room), had breakfast and started working on last-minute revisions to the Safe Thus Far.pdf  files that I'm taking to the Bridgeport National Bindary tomorrow. Then I went with Katie & Savanna to an orchard to pick some peaches. Yum! Great peach crop this year!

Peaches picked at the Quonquont Farm Orchard
Came back and had a bite to eat, and finished working on files.Then we had a Labor Day cookout - no guests, just Katie, Savanna, Crystal, Brendon and myself. Katie grilled some sausages and hamburgers, and we had cole slaw, tomatoes and chips. Nice. Katie is now at a Journey Home rehearsal and Savanna and I are listening on the radio to the Jays slaughter the Red Sox.

The work I was doing on files today was actually sort of significant, and marks something of the end of an era. Back in 1999, when I published Safe Thus Far, the history of the Guilford Church, I "founded" Black Mountain Press. It was, of course, just me and my computer, but I registered the name with the Vermont Secretary of State and the Vermont Department of Taxes. When I sold copies, I collected and paid Vermont Sales Tax, since I was not a non-profit. That has been true ever since. BMP has published several books in addition to Safe Thus Far: The Mended Cup (a collection of 52 of Shirley's children stories); Be Present Here (a collection of 180 of Shirley's pastoral prayers); More Than Thirty Years of Glorious Sound (a history of the Blanche Moyse Chorale); Remembering . . . With My Brother, Stewart, Vols. I and II (interviews with my brother about his life); The Story of Peter (interviews with my nephew, Peter Crockett); I Invite the Children to Come Forward (325 children's stories from Shirley's and my ministries at the Guilford Church), and The Poems of Shirley Crockett (a collection). In the wings is An Untold Story, Frederick Barnes Tolles' Unpublished History of 16-17th Century Colonial America and the Story Behind It.  Ten books - not a bad 18-year history for a little one-person press! And it's basically been a break-even proposition financially!
The thing is that now, the church is publishing And Grace Will Lead Us, which is a sequel to Safe Thus Far, and brings the church's history up to date since the end of Safe Thus Far. It is publishing it under the new name, Algiers Village Press. I think that as a non-profit, it will not need to collect and pay sales tax. So I decided it was time to give Safe Thus Far to the church. This edition will be published by The Algiers Press, and the church can continue to print copies after I'm gone. So all references to Black Mountain Press in Safe Thus Far, had to be replaced with Algiers Village Press, and I wrote an explanation as an addendum to the Preface. I will not dissolve Black Mountain Press yet - I still want to publish An Untold Story - but after that is done, I probably will.  





 


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