Sarah's Books - Used & Rare

Not really a blizzard, just continuous snow for thirty-six hours, adding up to ohhh, fourteen or fifteen inches of the white stuff at home, and perhaps an inch less here at the shop. I came in today to water the plants, scrape the sidewalk, get the mail, balance the checkbooks, and not sell any books. That last one was the easy part. Headed home very soon.

But not before mentioning that my distant cousin's new film has been chosen to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January: Katrina Browne's Traces of the Trade, a documentary about our common ancestors, a Rhode Island family who, for three generations, made their fortunes in the slave trade, and then lost them while essentially bankrupting their town in the process. In the film several family members (including my mother's cousins and their son, my second cousin) follow the route of the family's version of the triangle trade while discussing the implications and reverberations of this ancestry and its continuing legacy today. I haven't seen the film yet, myself, or read the book, but I'm looking forward to both. The film had a mention in the New York Times last week, the day the Sundance films were announced. Congratulations, Katrina!