History, Mystery, Cookery, Lit

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Kids, SciFi, Fantasy

Wine, Music, Golf

Biography, Romance, Military

Mountains, Ocean, Travel

Countries, States, Cities

Movies, Flying, Horror, Crafts

…Or pick another subject, and we can make that happen for you.

Instant libraries.

They make sense if you have a lot of shelves to fill in a hurry.

You get a cabin or beach house and find yourself with built-in bookcases. You want comfort reading. Do you go out and buy a few hundred mysteries one at a time?

Or you’ve redecorated a hotel lobby and installed a wall of shelving. What could be more striking than a thousand… or two… art book spines glowing?

It is a service we provide. Rescuing and finding new homes for thousands of books every week.

The Books by the Foot program was once controversial. Now people “get it.” There are vast populations of books shifting constantly. Many of them find themselves on the shores of the Wonder Book warehouse. That’s where we have to get creative. Stores. Internet mail order, bulk sales and Books by the Foot.

We have formulas and trained book lovers who know what to do with the umpteenth copy of a former blockbuster like The Da Vinci Code or an obscure Uzbek cookbook.

We take them all in and then figure out what to do with them—one at a time.

If you want an interesting virtual tour, visit www.booksbythefoot.com. Explore the creativity of a market we invented. Colors. Sizes. Subjects. Vintage. Check out the beauties in The Boutique.

The books you see there—almost all would have been destroyed as surplus or unsellable anywhere else.

Buy a box of kids’ books and donate them in advance of the holiday season. You can be a Johnny Appleseed planting a book in a child’s hands. Give a kid their first book—change a life.

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It is Friday morning. The sun will rise close to 7. Later by minutes every day.

The week was a blur. But then most are.

Wonder Book. Nature. Family. Pets. My own books. They all conspire to keep me so busy that, when I am not frustrated by being overwhelmed, I am spun in a whirlwind wondering what to pay attention to next.

The moon was nearly full last night. Just waned a bit. When I awoke, the forest outside my window was lit in cold white light. Colors were bleached but shapes defined. The phase will change about 6% each night.

When I got home last night, I felt the need for physical work. I emptied the truck of the load of wood I picked up at Ridgley and Terry’s wooded homestead earlier in the week. The lesser diameter pieces were tossed to one side. Those too thick for the woodstove were tossed toward the splitter.

Then I pulled out the choke pin. Opened the fuel valve. Switched on the kill switch and pulled the cord. The machine roared to life. I’d put on my Husqvarna earmuffs to protect my hearing.

Then I lifted log after log onto the cradle and pulled on the lever that sets the impeller into motion. When the wedge gets far enough into a log, it splits open with a “pop.” If it is small enough to fit in the woodstove, it gets tossed onto the burn pile. If not, it gets split again. Then it was done.

The work felt good.

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It is 6:56. I hop out of bed and there’s the sunrise!

(I didn’t filter it. The sun just looks that way to the iPhone this morning.)

It is HERE!

Twice a year it moves into the view I have out from the forest to the east.

It has been too cloudy to see the last few mornings.

The phases of the sun and moon—ancient timekeepers but still relevant up here where nothing’s changed much for centuries.

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Most of Thursday was spent seated upon a stool facing cartloads of books. This time the quarry was mostly dreary, worn, dusty and battered tomes that Larry has been bringing from an elderly couple who acquired books from the Library of Congress book sales long ago. (I don’t know if they still sell off their duplicates somehow.) Every book had a LOC bookplate.

It is a daunting collection, and I’ve been avoiding getting into it for months. While a percentage of them can be handled with a glance:

“These go to Books by the Foot as vintage bindings. These can go to the stores…”

And another percentage just needs a cursory inspection of the title or copyright pages:

“This needs to be researched. This one can go online at $19.99…”

Most are more problematic.

“What are all these spineless old octavos? Oh, just Pennsylvania Archives. Unsellable if intact. Impossible if disbound like these.”

But they can have interesting maps—although obscure.

And the carcasses can go up to Books by the Foot where they can be marketed as “Coverless” books. We also remove the marbled endpapers and boards and salvage them for sale.

There were also carts of collectibles that, for whatever reason, hadn’t sold online for some years. I am tasked with reviewing these and deciding their next fate.

Some will go back online, like the Uzbek cookbook. Maybe at a lower price. Maybe with a few keywords or notes scribbled onto a Post It and affixed the book’s cover.

“If we describe it better, perhaps the right person can find it amongst our 2 million titles and the hundreds of millions we compete with.”

I mean, how many Uzbek cookbooks can there be out there?

Some will be drastically reduced and sent to the stores in hopes that just the right person will come in for this obscure thing and a match with be made.

Others are hopeless, and Books by the Foot is their only chance.

It is slow mind-stretching labor, so I didn’t get through as many of the carts as I would have liked.

There will be plenty for the weekend.

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Wednesday morning. Raining hard. There will be no sunrise today. There has been a drought. I can almost hear the thirsty soil drinking, gulping. The plants, parched also, pull the fallen rain up into their stems and leaves.

Fall. The Equinox is Sunday, September 22nd 8:44 a.m. The earth will be facing the sun with the equator neither dipping north or south. The planet is not tilting. Then the northern hemisphere will begin turning away from the sun, and it will become colder.

The dogs are piled next to me. Pip has had his cough medicine. We go to a new vet this morning to see if they have any ideas. He is only 13 and was so vibrant not many months ago. He is in good spirits—even when coughing—but is slower. He loves to press against me. A real cuddler.

Last night, I watched The Seventh Seal. Actually, I listened to the English commentary and would look up from the floor when things got interesting. The 1957 black-and-white film was beautiful. Bergman was a genius. (Though his private life was pretty crazy.) The 14th century medieval knight sits down on a rocky Swedish beach to play chess with “Death.” If he wins, death cannot take him. I won’t give away the plot. I’ll watch it again soon. This time with the English subtitles. I was in Sweden just over a month ago.

Bergman had complex thoughts about death.

Although Bergman once described himself as one who had lost his faith in an afterlife, in 2000 he stated that a conversation he had with Erland Josephson helped him to believe that he would see Ingrid again. He said, “I’m not actually afraid of dying. On the contrary, really. I think it’ll be interesting.” In 2012, Max von Sydow stated in an interview with Charlie Rose that he had had many discussions with Bergman about religion which seemed to indicate that Bergman believed in an afterlife, with von Sydow even claiming that Bergman contacted him after his passing to prove there was indeed a life after death, though he chose not to elaborate further on the exact meaning of the statement.

Bergman passed away in 2007. His body was found at his home on the island of Fårö. He lived to 89.

The title, of course, refers to the Book of Revelation. I was on the island of Patmos a couple of years ago. There I was more than surprised to find that you can visit the cave where “John” (no one is quite sure which John—but likely not the apostle as he would have been over 100 years old by the time it was written) wrote down the visions of the Apocalypse he experienced there. That book, with its myths and monsters, is controversial for Biblical scholars as well as lay readers. But its ultimate message is one of hope and redemption.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

It was magical to be on the spot where a book of the Bible was actually written.

Tingles.

Bergman had plenty of internal demons he battled, and not just about religion and death. Those difficult relationships and suffering produced the magical films that are his legacy to the world.

Why wasn’t I watching the movie? I had finally forced myself to sit on the floor and go through the “COVID Tub” I’d brought home months ago from the conference room at work. There was about 30 pounds of paper in it that I had to go through. There were about 6 inches of files filled with legal and internal COVID material. That needs to be saved not only for the “Archives” but in case something comes that makes all the madness that happened then necessary to revisit.

There were dozens of unopened statements and other mail tossed in because everything was closed and I was working like a madman for survival. A few hundred pages of payroll printouts from when we were switching, also in March 2020, from an old-style system (I would go to the accountant every other Friday and pick up the physical checks and manually sign over 120 paychecks and tax documents) to a digital processor. There’s no reason to save the printouts. They are in digital files somewhere. Those got recycled.

There was plenty of other stuff. Some personal stuff—like birthday cards from my July 2020 birthday—I put aside to go with other memorabilia.

So, the tub was emptied, and the last of the containers of paper problems I’d brought home months ago was done.

Ahhhh…

Wasn’t so difficult after all.

It didn’t last long though. 5 boxes of “family” stuff arrived from my sister-in-law Kathryn in San Francisco. She’s moving out the beautiful townhouse she and brother, Tony, shared to an apartment. It was stuff she thought I should have or might want.

So, I brought those home and put them in the garage downstairs…

Now I have a fresh batch of paperwork to process.

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Last Friday, the 13th, was the usual rat race.

This blog. The vans racing out to the stores.

We’ve been sending collectibles the Frederick store to fill the 19 new glass bookcases we had installed.

It is exciting to think of all the wondrous things that will be showcased there.

Saturday, I went to Barbara’s Lorien again. It is now owned by a couple who are renovating it to become a wellness retreat. It is now called San Antonio Farm at Lorien. They invited me out for a gathering of family and friends. I met Howard and Sue from New Market Plains Winery walking in.

They were bringing wine.

I brought a book and a plant.

The book was an Amelia Peabody title signed by Barbara (as Elizabeth Peters) and by me—on the dedication page. I inscribed it to Vicky—the “new queen of Lothlorien…”

They’ve done wonderful improvements to the house and gardens, but nothing to change the ambience and vibe of the magical place.

Things must evolve. In this case, the evolution is a positive thing.

We sat around a table outside and ate and drank wine. We talked about the past, present and future.

Before dark, I wandered off and strolled through the gardens.

At the waterfall, the voices whispered.

There’s a Fall Festival there tomorrow.

From yoga to wine to honey to a book signing.

It is the first time Lorien has been open to the public.

Last Sunday was my grandson’s 1st birthday. I went to my son’s house in Virginia. The little fellow is now a little human full of personality. He crawls a hundred miles an hour and pulls himself upright on furniture or knees. He didn’t quite understand the concept of tearing off wrapping paper. But he was thrilled with all the attention and toys he received.

He had two fancy birthday cakes. One smaller one for him to dig into—manually. (That took some prompting, but he soon had it smeared all over himself and his highchair.) And a larger one for the adults.

Monday, I forced myself to process the books I’ve brought in from my personal collection. About ten boxes of Folio Society.

And more personal books like these.

You can find the collection here. Each has my custom bookplate inside. I’d like to think that in the future there might be some footnote about a manic Maryland bookseller who wrote hundreds of book stories and rescued millions of books.

When I got home, I dragged the rest of the branches from the tall maple that fell on the deck down the slope and tossed them onto the woodpile.

That may be the tallest the pile has ever been.

Tuesday, I’d scheduled some time to go visit Ridgley and Terry and get some of the wood they have piled up.

They wanted to feed me, so I picked up a bottle of champagne as a good guest should.

They grilled some cheeseburgers, and they were wonderful. We chatted about books and the past.

Larry brought a weird collection in. Almost were wrapped in plastic bags. There were some decent books, but none really merited that level of protection.

What goes through people’s minds?

A nice group of African American pamphlets came in. (The stack behind the face outs is all similar material.)

And King Ludwig dropped in.

He was the Mad King of Bavaria who built the fantasy castle of Neuschwanstein. At first, I was a little confused as the signature is Ludovici, and although the photo was familiar, nothing seemed to click. Google wasn’t helpful using Ludovici. My friend, autograph expert non-pareil, Gerry Stodolski set me straight.

Wednesday, a friend was back visiting from Hawaii. We went out for a fancy dinner, and the Tasting Room outdid themselves. I had a filet “Pittsburgh” style.

It was half price wine night, so I “saved” a lot of money. Afterward, we went back because she wanted to see the warehouse again. We sat and chatted til very late in my office as I did show and tell with the bibliophile.

My new plastic deck is going in. It doesn’t look bad.

The contractor hung the huge, heavy wooden Last Supper.

He is a little concerned and wants to reinforce the hardware.

Tonight, I’m going to Baltimore to see America (the rock group.)

I think next week will be quieter.

And the weekend will be books, books, books and probably some gardening.