“Abide With Me.”

(typing one handed.)

billions of miles from home.
to have fled for decades into the vast void between stars.
the vanguard of destiny.
leave this troubled sphere.
there is no deception in eternity.

what a week.

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friday

to a wondrous meal on the sidewalk in downtown frederick at the tasting room (with a much better menu and maybe staff changes.) cars passing by a few feet away. a covid vestige. social distancing out on the pavement. november 1, dining alfresco. glasses clink. old fashioned. octopus. crab toast. filet pittsburgh. caesar salad. lobster mash. a celebration of sorts. there at the end.

to the theater where pink floyd was recreated note for note.

then back out into the balmy night.

home.

saturday. books and carts and boxes. panic pricing to race fate. down to dc to watch athletes on ice. an icon skating toward destiny. an unbreakable unbeatable feat. one more step along the way. ovechkin scored goal number 859.

sunday. a frenzy of books and carts and boxes. working to beat the devil. whistling past the graveyard.

the final meal. the lucky corner. always wonderful. that night a failure on all fronts.

the little ones are sent away. i cannot care for them with one arm and the other recovering from a scalpel.

monday. resigned to fate. watching the clock while everything around seems out of sync. time to go. questions. signatures, explanations. on a cold hard bed. “our father…” “this will burn a bit. “our father.” gone. in a void. i must be breathing. no time. nowhere.

“how are you doing?”

“i’m fine.”

rolled out to my ride. home. up the steps and into my empty home. the dogs gone. chilly. the furnace got turned on.

water. crackers. vietnamese leftovers heated. much better than originally presented. lots of oyster soy sauce dashed on. star wars. the third episode. the birth of luke, leia, darth vader. comfort viewing. comfort food. alive. the worry, is it behind me now?

well-wishers write. and then to bed. a few pages, and then i’m gone. this time to a conscious dreamland where long stories are spun by an unknown hand.

---

wednesday

on the way to hagerstown. ernest is driving.

i saw the doctor this morning and was told my arm is still not back to normal despite surgery, and i should avoid using it. but he doesn’t want to see me for a week and told me i could shower and change bandages myself.

“call me if you have any problems.”

i don’t react well to issues like this. depressing.

i didn’t look at the election until this morning—wednesday—surprising in a number of ways.

shocking.

i pulled the trigger on a new van this morning. i signed the contract for the new building. we have 60 days to study and see if there are any problems or if we should go ahead with it.

a one armed bookseller…

the same arm was damaged about 22 years in a soccer accident. the bicep tendon got ripped from the bone and needed to be reattached by platinum screws. i was wrapped up in a sling, and the arm immobilized for 6 weeks. when the bandages were removed, it was very ugly.

it was ugly this morning.

discolored. wrinkled from compression bandaging. it looked like a mummy’s arm. dead.

depressing.

ernest and i will look into uniting the 5 for $5 sections. currently the kids’ section is broken in two. more than half the dvds and cds are located in the book sections.

so much is going so well in wonderland…

why this interruption?

---

Friday, November 8.

The “atomic” clock on the nightstand next to my bed says it is just after 6. It hasn’t readjusted to the time change last weekend. I think I just need to take the batteries out and put them in again.

It is just after 5. Silence and blackness. The dogs are still up in Pennsylvania. They’ll probably return this weekend.

It is 67 inside and 53 out. The house is holding the heat of the warm days this week.

I stepped outside and heard an owl somewhere out in the forest. In the next hour or so, the creatures of the night will give way to the songbirds and squirrels and other animals of the day.

The bears will go into hibernation in the next few weeks unless the warm temperatures hold and keep them active into December. The rule of thumb around here is to not put bird feeders and suet out until after Thanksgiving and to bring them in before Easter. Since the bears can’t climb onto my porch roof, I use the second-story window feeders all year. I’ve only seen a couple of bears on the mountain this year. I’m away most of the days, and I make sure there’s nothing left out to attract them.

This will be the 36th day with no rain in the region. They say it is a record. (There was one morning up here when the ground was wet, but I guess that was a localized thing.) I’ve needed to carry water down to the 50 or so transplants I put in last week.

There’s a beautiful dawn. Low slate gray scattered clouds on the horizon add to the drama.

It has been a lost week in many ways. Extremely eventful in others. I’ll be glad to put it behind me and return to the fray.

I called the surgeon on Thursday morning. I had prepared a list of questions to be sure all my concerns were addressed. I think things will be ok. It will just take more time for my arm to return to normal. He put my mind at rest—pretty much.

Sigh…

Why?!?

“Accidents happen,” I was told weeks ago.

“Not to me,” I replied.

I’m cautious.

We met about the October sales last Friday afternoon.

Boom!

All three stores are up over October 2023. The Frederick store had dramatic increases—especially with the “better” books. Customers are embracing the 19 additional glass cases we installed in September.

The “Dollar” book sections (actually $1.59—5 for $5) are growing but are still a work in progress. Their expansion and layout is still being tweaked—especially in the Hagerstown store. But that work is almost done. Children’s books especially are flying off the shelves at that price.

Books by the Foot had a great month too. We are frequently sold out of the children’s boxes and Gaylords. It wasn’t that long ago we had a huge overstock of them. What happened? Maybe COVID has parents and teachers and caregivers returning to the physical book again.

I came up with a new style: Formal Wear. Books whose bindings are completely black or white are given black or white dust jackets. We will see if the designers embrace that. It is fun coming up to find creative ways to place otherwise unsellable (and undonatable) books.

The internet sales are grinding away as well. The system is a magical mix of human interaction with high-end technology. We are “rescuing” more books than ever.

There’s synergy with the brick and mortar stores as well. We installed “kiosks” in each long ago. If a customer comes in looking for a particular book or author or subject and we can’t satisfy that want with store stock, we do a search of the 2 million plus internet books (and DVDs, CDs, LPs…) in our warehouse website stock. In seconds, we usually get results.

(That’s an old sign. We have way more items than that!)

For instance, we always have a lot of Agatha Christie available in the stores—from mass market paperbacks to collectible editions. But if we don’t have all the titles a customer wants, we can just check the kiosk and get hundreds of results. And the prices shown include shipping to you.

We will also deliver the book to any of our stores for free in a couple of business days. You get an additional discount if you use this service as we save money on postage and packaging.

Sometimes I need to step back and look at what we’ve done. All in the service of the printed book.

I should be proud. So much more to do…

Wednesday morning, I was told to use my left arm as little as possible while it is healing. I didn’t get that message after the surgery Monday afternoon during debriefing by the nurses. Maybe I didn’t remember. So on Tuesday, I got to the warehouse and spent much of the day handling books with both hands. In late afternoon, I noticed my fingers were swelling. (The compression bandage covered much of my hand and all my arm to above the elbow.)

“Hmmm…”

I went home and rested it—watching movies with my arm raised.

I went to bed early on Tuesday night to avoid the stress of the election and because Monday’s surgery still had draining effects on me.

I saw the surgeon first thing on Wednesday morning. I was more than a bit dazed from the morning’s headlines. When my arm was unwrapped from all the bandaging, I didn’t want to look at my arm. The doctor instructed me to. It was shocking. It looked cadaverous.

“The skin didn’t die. That’s good…”

My eyes rolled back, I’m sure. I was pretty speechless.

I was assured the dark gray discoloration was ok. The wrinkling and deformation was a result of the heavy compression bandaging.

(In retrospect, I didn’t factor in the orangish antiseptic that was painted on my hand and up nearly to my shoulder.)

“I had trouble stopping the bleeding… Cauterized… Had to make a second incision to get all the coagulated blood out…

He was very thorough.

“Any questions?” he asked several times. “Come back next Wednesday.”

Is my arm dying?

Avoidance. A big fault of mine. Always has been. I guess I had too many bad experiences with confrontation.

I was in shock the rest of Wednesday and into Thursday morning.

Dazed. I went through the motions of being alive, but worried I was a dead man walking.

Wounded. Defective. Disarmed. Irrelevant.

Wednesday at the Hagerstown store, I operated on one plane—making decisions and directing projects. On another, I wandered through the aisles looking at the hundreds of thousands of books on shelves. I’d pull books off shelves here and there in a desultory fashion. Culling for space or pulling for Books by the Foot relegation.

I don’t want to feel that way again, but I suppose some hurdle will rise before me again.

I want to work. There’s firewood to bring inside. Pruning to be done. 500 or so flower bulbs arrived in the mail, and I need to get them in the ground.

And books… so many books. It is difficult to do that work with one arm. But not impossible.

---

Last weekend was monstrous in the warehouse as well. Not knowing what Monday’s outcome would be, I threw myself at the books.

I got a lot done.

Poor Giles would go to boarding on Monday afternoon.

I stickered a lot of books individually as well.

Those are collectible editions that will be sent for special attention at the stores.

Monday, I got to work dreading the day ahead. I signed a lot of checks. (I signed a lot of documents this week with my wounded left arm.)

I went here and there through the warehouse, giving out projects for the months ahead—just in case.

There was a lot of framed artwork Larry had brought from estates.

I propped maybe a hundred up in rows of price piles.

These sell pretty well in the stores, and as with books, there are always surprises mixed in stuff whose only appeal may be the frames.

A doctor in Hagerstown donated over 1000 copies of a cookbook to us. He had printed them as a fundraiser for gastroenterological research. He was left with these and wanted them to go away. You can get one free with a $10 purchase at the Hagerstown Wonder Book store. While supplies last! (A long time.)

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The sun is up this Friday morning. Any little puff of breeze sends leaves fluttering from the forest canopy to the ground. They strike the earth with soft pattering sounds—maybe like chipmunk footsteps. The birds are pounding sunflower seeds on the roof outside the bedroom window. Chickadees. Titmice. Cardinals. Mourning doves…

The year is entering another phase.

Things will be all right, I think. Despite all the problems and changes, things will be all right.

My grandkids are doing well. A 1-year-old and a 6-week-old. Another due in December. Three boys. (So far, I hope.)

And the world for children may be improving, at least in this country. Schools and other entities are curbing the constant use of phones and social media that has so many addicted. (Social media is a poison for me. I avoid it as much as possible…) If the resurgence in popularity of kids’ books is any indication.

We used to send lots of kids’ books overseas. Africa. Asia… Those programs seem to have disappeared. We do work with charities that retain all their kids’ books to send away and use us for their other “leftovers.” We can do good things with lots of leftovers.

I should be happy we have reached equilibrium with children’s books. But I’m never satisfied. Maybe we can figure a way to get A LOT more. And do something good and innovative with them.

(We did donate a couple hundred to the Weinberg Center last week. I delivered them myself on Saturday morning. My arm was still in use then. They gave them to attendees of a kids’ show that day.)

That’s a great movie. The book was written by Davis Grubb. James Agee did the screenplay. I fell in love with Lillian Gish after watching Way Down East, Intolerance, The Birth of a Nation… and other great silent films in Mr. Gibbs’ classroom on the movie nights he provided. I was very lucky to be in his class. Opera, ballet, classic cinema, international literature… He opened many doors, and I was like a starving boy to enter all of them.

The book will abide. It will endure.

The children—so many of them—will abide. They will endure.

we walked along the creek together
did I tread too softly
or was my step too firm?
it was a fine line between the risks
and I failed one way other
or perhaps both
and now I walk alone
on the mountain
and in the valley
no goal to seek
or horizon to pursue
wounded and mortal
I wander
one foot before the other