Worlds at Work

Top row, below: I set up a selection of books with boats at the thrift store.
Sometimes I save books to display, but it's more common that I notice several books (from different donors) have the same theme, like these, and I group them together.

I'm so happy that only one book has a price sticker: the new flat-pricing is already saving me time. Signs read:
Paperbacks 99¢ ea.
Hardbacks $1.99 ea.

But again, I was caught out making an assumption.
(I like when that happens--it's a little trip out of my world-view!)

The cashiers have to recognize paper- and hardbacks, to charge correctly, and the lead cashier, from Eritrea, told me she was confused by the difference.

I was trying to explain it by talking about materials, but that quickly got tricky. Bibles, for instance, may be soft-backed but made of leather....
(How would you explain the difference between a cat and a dog, by looks alone?)

So I took a paperback and bent it back and forth.
"If you can bend it, it's a paperback."

"I'll tell the others," she said. 

Easy. Someone might get a Bible bound in bendy calf for 99 cents, but so what? 

Then I felt I could ask her a question. I try to rein in my interviewing impulses at work--asking questions can be a touchy thing when you don't know the cultural rules.

"What kind of desserts do you have in Eritrea?" I asked.
I was picturing something like baklava.

"Cakes!" she said. "Italian cakes and pastries. So good!"

Eritrea used to be an Italian colony, you know. My coworker's African father was an Italian teacher. When she was growing up, however, the country was desperately poor. Still is.

I found this colonial-era gas station in a Guardian article, "Africa’s ‘Little Rome’, the Eritrean city frozen in time by war and secrecy".
(Reminds me of those wonderful Ed Ruscha prints of gas stations--I'd posted one once.)

"Sitting on the edge of a roundabout in Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea and the centre of Italy’s former African empire, the Fiat Tagliero service station is a glorious sight: art deco lettering spells out its name in both Italian and Amharic in a font worthy of a Fellini film poster, while two 30-metre concrete wings soar across the former garage forecourt below, mimicking an aeroplane."

Anyway, I still price special books individually.
Yesterday I was excited to open a worn book, from 1901, about family medicine and find color plates inside. 
Each layer lifts up to reveal the anatomical layer below. What do you call these?

Huh. "Lift-the-flap anatomy illustrations" [links to exhibit]. Very technical, eh?
Posters of such have a fancier name, "anatomical fugitive sheets": see an interactive one at Duke.
Gotta love the internet!