This page is provided by The Personal Navigator. Antique and curious books, diaries, maps.        Author: Sam Coulbourn, 7 Mill Lane, Rockport, MA, 01966 USA. E-mail: persnav@shore.net.   Tel. (978) 546-7138.  Excuse this poor web publishing — nevertheless, we hope you’ll be able to find something exciting to buy! Picture at top right of every page shows interior of Rockport’s new Shalin Liu Performance Center, home to Rockport Chamber Music Festival and a rich selection of classical, popular, and folk music programs, Metropolitan Opera Live Simulcasts, and more.  ©2011. All rights reserved. Revised Friday, April 01, 2011.

The Personal Navigator 

 

Antique Books, Maps, Papers &c.

Page 2

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The Personal Navigator is standing by, ready to steer you in the vicinity of some fascinating bits of America’s past, or fiction, travel, ephemera, advertising items, children’s books, religious books and papers, maps. 

We’ve just refreshed our Big List of Books catalogue. That includes Fiction, Music, Poetry, Reference Religious and other such books and booklets.  Take a look!

People ask: How did I ever get into the business of selling books?

             I ponder that sometimes, especially when I am sitting at my computer, a few feet below ground level, in our basement.

             Fifty-three years ago I started out driving destroyers, and then submarines, around the Pacific, Atlantic, Mediterranean, Black and North Seas.

             The Navy sent me to “shore duty” and it was a country few in the U.S. had heard of: Iran. When I was there (40 years ago), it was a beautiful country, and the people were wonderful.  I learned some Farsi and we traveled all over, including Ardabil, Babolsar, Gonbad-e-Qabus, Bushehr, Khark, Khorramshahr, Chahbahar, Esfahan, Shiraz.

             I commanded a destroyer in the last days of America’s involvement in Viet Nam, 1972-73, and then commanded an ammunition ship providing bombs and bullets to the carriers and other warships in the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, during the Yom Kippur War of ‘73 and its aftermath.

             I went to Naples, Italy to help the Navy operate in the Mediterranean, and keep an eye on the Soviet Navy, and we had a grand time exploring Italy.  Napoli è bella!

             I had already learned Russian at the Naval Academy, but then I was ordered to Moscow, and found myself learning much more Russian and playing cat-and-mouse with the KGB in Russia. We visited Leningrad many times, and Arkhangelsk, Ashkhabad, Dushanbe, Odessa, Murmansk, Kiev, Riga, Talinn, Gorky, Samarkand, Stalingrad, Sukhumi, Sochi, Tbilisi, Batumi, Khabarovsk,Nakhodka,  Irkutsk, Makhachkala, Poti, Rostov-na-Donu, Baku, Yerevan, Yevpatoriya, Zagorsk, Zavidovo,  and more.

             I went from Moscow to command a naval base in Japan in 1983. I learned some Japanese, enjoyed the company of Japanese people, learned something of their culture, and we had a wonderful time traveling in that country and around Asia.

             So then, after 30 years of the Navy, I was out, retired.  I ran a leadership institute at a Boston area college (Endicott) for six years.

             All that was my “schooling” for the book and ephemera business. I now buy, catalogue and sell all manner of odd, interesting and weird books, newspapers, advertisements, maps… and I love it!

             See my latest discoveries at New Books.

The Personal Navigator, and Mrs. Navigator ready to greet the leaders of the Soviet Navy several years ago when we were stationed in Moscow.

Plain Language from Truthful James (The Heathen Chinee)

by Francis Bret Harte (1839-1902)

 

Table Mountain, 1870

 

WHICH I wish to remark,  

  And my language is plain,  

That for ways that are dark  

  And for tricks that are vain,  

The heathen Chinee is peculiar,          

   Which the same I would rise to explain

 

Ah Sin was his name;  

  And I shall not deny,  

In regard to the same,  

  What that name might imply;   

But his smile it was pensive and childlike,  

  As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.  

  

It was August the third,  

  And quite soft was the skies;  

Which it might be inferred   

  That Ah Sin was likewise;  

Yet he played it that day upon William  

  And me in a way I despise.

….etc.

Plain Language from Truthful James, by Francis Bret Harte (1839-1902); Table Mountain, 1870

Collection of nine drawings by Joseph Hull, published by the Western News Company, Chicago, 1870.  This collection dramatizes the racial prejudice against Chinese brought to America to work on the railroad in the 19th century.  Note the eighth drawing in the series, showing an all-out melee against the “Chinee”. 9 prints, matted  20 x 25 cm. Set of nine prints, matted in blue cardboard matting. Title card is not present.  Lightly soiled. Print No. 6 has 1 x 1 cm tear in lower left hand corner. Good.(7093) $85.00. Humor/Poetry.

Plate No. 8 of Hull’s marvelous collection shows Ah Sin being thrown in the air after having been caught with some “extra” cards up his sleeve.