Thursday, September 20, 2012

Speechless.

So I held back on posting one flyer from this weekend:


And after checking on that lead, this happened:


The store proprietor said that these books, along with copies of a number of other books that appear to be from the same author (including a spiralbound version of the "Compassion Over Passion Volume 1" book), have been in the store for several YEARS! Their apparent author comes in roughly once a week and "fiddles" with them, adding to the stacks and sometimes taking things away. And he wasn't aware that they were even for sale--there are loose sheets of the flyers which he understands to be on sale for ten cents each, but he there were no price tags on the books themselves and he wasn't aware of a sale price. After showing him the flyer above, which lists them as being for sale for $15 a piece, we produced a hand-made receipt and volumes 1-7 of the series (100 numbered flyers in each) were purchased.



I'm not sure what this means for the future of this blog project yet...

5 comments:

  1. ...wow.

    Did you buy the Compassion Over Passion book? And do the flyers exactly match the ones you've posted (for the numbers you have that match)?

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    1. I just bought the flyers, or "newsletters" in the parlance of their author.

      There are actually 4 volumes of a Compassion Over Passion series there--volume 1 is the same book I found on Amazon, but printed Kinkos-style with a spiral binding. The others are mentioned in that flyer above. Then there are two educational books: one is aimed at elementary and middle school education, and the other purports to help with high school and college education. And finally there is an "advice for schizophrenia" book, which is attributed to the author's real name (no author is listed on the flyer collections; Milken is listed as author of the Compassion Over Passion series, and "Former White House Staff" is listed as author of the educational books.

      There were 7 volumes of the flyers, and presumably an 8th volume will appear eventually, as I've seen flyers cross the 800 numbering barrier now. They do seem to match the ones I have, though even within the series, there are some duplicates that are numbered directly into the series (sometimes within 10 pages of each other).

      Wow, indeed. Another copy of the flyer above was up this morning, and the author also mentioned the availability of this stuff during her testimony at the City Council last night. So I'm guessing another set of these will soon appear.

      And when that happens, I feel a sort of predicament coming on: do I continue posting these things if they're available in some limited capacity, or do I just direct folks to the store if they want to read these? Many of them do say explicitly to "make copies," and this site is arguably an extension of that general idea, but...

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    2. Fascinating! And interesting that the other Compassion Over Passion books not only actually exist, but were there in the store as well.

      It's certainly a quandary that you're in. My only thought involves the availability of the material being locally limited. I would love to get a copy of the stuff in the bookstore, but I live in Maryland, and the store doesn't even seem to have a website. Without your work, I'd never have had a chance to read her writings.

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    3. Yes, the store has no website--it's a very odd place, as one would expect to be involved in this odyssey! It's full of old sermon/gospel records and cassettes from the 70s still in their shrinkwrap, and that sort of thing. I think he must stay in business selling rosaries and trinkets, Catholic iconography, that sort of thing.

      Because he didn't even know these were technically "for sale" until I showed him the flyer, he didn't consider these part of his store inventory, and wanted to do cash-only on them. But perhaps if more sets of them sell locally, he'll take them on as inventory? After all, a full set of this stuff would run over $200 at $15 per "book." Hmm. What to do, what to do...

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  2. Hey I just found your blog, and I was wondering if I could get more information on this group? They're still distributing these flyers on campus, and I want to do some research on the group for a project. I'm not even sure if this is still active, but figured I'd give it a shot!

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