September
Another summer gone. It was pretty well spent. A long trip. Sick for a couple weeks after that. So many books. Perhaps a new venture. Vast improvements at the Frederick store.
Another timekeeper in modern times is the phone. I take a lot of photos. Scrolling back through puts a context on almost every day. I can “see” where I was and what I was doing almost any day in the past 8 years or so.
What future will technology bring next? Will we be more human or less?
It is Tuesday morning. So cold. 50 degrees and a good breeze blowing through my bedroom. It felt good to bundle up and pull the sheet and coverlet up to my neck.
I cut a lot of wood last night and carried it into the barn. There was also a good deal of potting and repotting to do. I’ve put off much of that all summer—walking past the flower pots, bags of soil and sand, broken plants from when a contractor knocked a couple off the porch.
The paver is coming tomorrow to seal coat the upper landing area. He told me I shouldn’t seal coat the steep part of the drive as it makes it slipperier. I certainly appreciate his honesty. The last thing I need is a slipperier steep driveway with winter coming.
Yesterday was the Labor Day holiday. We were open and busy. Lots of orders online over the weekend.
I took a van to the Frederick bookstore. There were lots of customers. Most of the big changes we planned have turned out great. Categories moved. Categories expanded. Categories made smaller.
We are still waiting for the glass to be installed on the new wooden bookcases.
Clark texted that all three stores had excellent August sales. We will meet soon and break it down.
The weekend was carts, carts, carts—this latest version of my booklife.
Wednesday, September 4th
My older son’s birthday. What a day that was. We were living in an old rustic stone house in the country south of Gettysburg. It was a cool day with a light breeze. Partly cloudy. Strange how that stands out all these years later.
Now he is having a second son in December. My younger boy is expecting a son any day now. Three grandkids in just over a year. I’ve certainly waited long enough.
I awoke at 5 and dozed til nearly 6. It was too cold to get up from under the sheet, light coverlet and pillows piled around me. 51 outside. 62 in. The windows are all open, and a light breeze flows through the house. Birdsong is just beginning out in the forest.
Dawn was a brilliant orange. Sunrise is still some minutes off.
Sunrises are still to the north a bit, coming up in the forest. Perhaps in a week or ten days they will become visible in the gap in front of my home, which looks out over the valley.
Strange dreams. I was out in California around the Bay. Driving up a winding cliff-side dirt road—someone was with me and someone driving in front of me. We got to the top, and the road became too rough to continue. I backed down very carefully. Doom drop off to the right.
Then we were down by the Bay. It was dark, and we were walking among foreboding docks. I couldn’t tell where we were. None of the crisscrossing bridges looked familiar.
It was a good sleep with the usual interim around 2 a.m. I turned on the lamp clipped to the headboard and read some of Barbara Michaels’ Prince of Darkness. 1969. It was long before I knew her. I was just a child in Rockville. The styles and vernacular reflect the time, but I can still hear her voice in it.
There’s a new queen in Lorien. The magic continues. Long may she reign. She is opening Lorien to the public for the first time ever.
You should go! It looks like fun. Food and crafts and a beautiful venue. Perhaps you’ll even hear Barbara’s voice whispering in the breeze. There’s info on their Instagram @sanantoniofarmatlorien. September 21. 10-3. I’ll find out more next week. But I’m sure you can find information Googling.
I can’t linger in bed and write as I wish. Contractors are coming to work on my driveway and the quarter mile of rough gravel road I share with my only (invisible) neighbor. I had to clear all the firewood off the drive. That’s where I dump it before cutting it into stove lengths and carting it into the barn. Then all the flowerpots had to be moved off the pavement. Then the heavy blower strapped on, and all the debris blown off and the edges defined by cleaning soil that had accumulated. The evening was so beautiful when I stopped. I filled the pouch of my work hoodie with peanuts and went out to sit with the dogs. A glass of Pinot Noir set carefully so they wouldn’t knock it over. I would crack one peanut for me. Another for me. One for them. Two for me…
Spring is wondrous, but there’s something about fall that makes it my favorite season. Soon the leaves will begin to color, and the world up here will become even more magic.
A flock of mourning doves is on the porch roof just outside the open window. They peck at the seed and coo. Their heads bob in a silly way. When I walk past the window, they rise with an audible flutter and soft song and soar down into the forest.
Thursday already.
The weeks fly by.
The pavers did a good job. The upper landing is glossy black. Too bad they couldn’t do the whole driveway. The owner was honest enough to tell me sealing the steep slope would make it slippery. It is scary enough in winter weather as it is. The last thing I wanted was to “wax the sliding board.”
Wednesday was also a day of errands. My truck was ready, so I walked over to Rice Tire. The woodstove needs a new catalytic converter, and Vermont Castings refuses to deal with customers directly. I have to go to a stove shop and order it from them. Then Costco for some supplies. The bank for cash…
Tedious.
Finally, back to the warehouse to meet about August sales with Clark and Joey.
BOOM!
All three stores are up over August 2023. The Frederick store had its best month since the Millennium. And that is with all the construction going on. (We are still waiting for the glass doors to be installed.)
I’m still amazed (and thankful to the staff and customers) for the growth at all the stores since we reopened after COVID closures.
Why?
How?
It is counterintuitive.
To pass knowledge, immutable, on to the next ones is a duty.
Do not write that the written word is obsolete.
Whether carved into tablets
Or scribbled onto a napkin.
It is tangible to eye, hand and mind.
Printed, they stand the test of time and defy vandalism.
Internet sales are strong. So is Books by the Foot. But costs are up too. So growth is necessary. Necessary for survival.
The work is so hard. Last weekend was all carts and books. The plastic stools I sit on are getting harder.
And I wonder more and more what is next.
Fall work is already waiting on the mountain. There are projects I didn’t get to yet.
More stone walls to build.
More transplanting.
I got an urge Tuesday and ordered spring bulbs online. I didn’t count. Just ordered one thing after another. I guess I’ll be surprised at all the work that arrives in brown corrugated boxes.
And the “sameness” at night is becoming tedious. No dinner or shows or walks in the woods.
The words hit like a blow. It was not a surprise. The week since has had me on two planes. The functioning world must go on. There are responsibilities and duties. Others count on me. On the other plane, I am gone. Adrift. Outside, all is blackness. It is the dark inside that I fear. I wish the night would not end. At least for a long spell. Though sleep has been evasive, I don’t have to face the world. Timelessness. The light goes on. I turn it off. On, I reach for the book. It is pretty bad, but I’ve gotten this far. I’ll see it through. Off, I stretch under the cool sheets. There is no light. I am engulfed in a world where only gravity exists. And the touch of the familiar geography within arm’s reach. The forest sounds. Insect static. Softer this year for some reason. The screaming call and response are gone. Perhaps extinguished by some buggy plague. On. Should I pick up a pen and a pad or read a few pages and hope they put me to sleep? The plot is all over the place. The characters’ actions make no sense. What was Barbara thinking when she wrote it? Experimenting. Writing what she thought the market wanted. 1969. Forever ago. Off. I reach for a dog and give him a firm, affectionate pat. No reaction.
I found the metal Tolkien figures I bought in Toledo. They were in bags on the floor next to my desk. I’d forgotten them. They’ve lain there since December 2022. I brought them home and stood them up.
The crazy investment in Little Prince cutlery was with German steel, beautifully designed. Maybe I should frame them.
More stuff. A life of stuff. Well, it makes the time pass and keeps me from thinking too much.
The Wonder Book movie series at the Weinberg was announced. We are sponsoring 10 films over the next 10 months.
The first is next week.
I love that film. I first saw it when I visited London on my sophomore summer trip backpacking through Europe. The Redford/Farrow version of The Great Gatsby is larger than life. It didn’t help that I was deeply in love at the time and an ocean away from her. My dad had sent me as a consolation to missing my spring semester in Germany. He had become quite ill and had major surgery that winter. I didn’t feel I should leave the country. He died in my arms a year later—just a few days before my 21st birthday. Life was never the same.
Part of the soundtrack struck me and is a part of me to this day.
There are all kinds of love in this world but never the same love twice.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
While I enjoy supporting the community by offering these “book films” at the iconic Weinberg theater, there is also a selfish reason. I get to see these films on the big screen myself. While I did see Gatsby on a big screen a half century ago, most of the films I’ve only seen on television. Tickets are cheap. $5-7. Employees go free.
Another song from the soundtrack:
When you and I were seventeen
And life and love were new,
The world was all a field of green
And skies were smiling blue,
That golden spring when I was king
And you my wonderful queen,
Do you recall when love was all
And we were seventeen?
I didn’t finish the Baltic trip story yet again. I have thousands of excuses.
Last weekend, the load of books set aside for me was much larger than usual. I threw myself into the work, and it consumed both Saturday and Sunday.
The result was a LOT of books “rescued” and sent to the stores.
Many of these are from the 6 Gaylords imports from Britain. They were supposed to “vintage” which means, to us, pre-1940 hardcovers. Their definition is different. But there were a lot of cool “British” editions of the Brontes, Jane Austen and hard-to-find-in-the-US authors like Arthur Ransome. Somehow they included a few hundred Penguin Classics—mostly the orange ones.
Those had a strange cult following a few years ago. I hope they’re still popular over here.
Then the week was dominated by huge issues at the stores. There was the roof leak caused by the torrential rains last Thursday night. The estimates for repairs—well, I could buy a new car.
(Cars… my truck has barely 20,000 miles on it. The Explorer 25,000. Both were purchased in late 2019—right before COVID. I’m just not driving like I was before COVID. So my 5-year-old cars are still virtually “new.”)
There was a lot of work at home getting ready for the paver. I need to take in wood that was on the drive outside the barn. A lot of potted plants (and empty pots and saucers) needed to be relocated off the pavement. 6 or 7 pots were filled and cuttings from broken plants set in them. Both sides of the drive had to be weed whipped so the pavers could see where the 6 tons of 3 inch Delaware River rubble needed to be spread. Tuesday night, the whole upper drive needed to be blown clean of debris. Any garden plants hanging over the asphalt needed to be brushed back so they could “paint” the edges. It was a lot of work after difficult days at work.
It turned out great.
The upper driveway looks new. I wish they could have painted the whole driveway. The steep part is so ugly now.
It is Friday morning. 60 degrees. The highs on Saturday and Sunday will be 70-71.
Great sleeping weather if only I could sleep.
Thursday, I sat myself at the conference table and vowed to attack the paperwork and statements I need to review. I am months behind. (Blame the books.) I got through most of the July statements.
“What were these two 6-figure checks for?” I asked one of the office staff.
“Taxes on the new warehouses.”
“Hmmm… that’s why I need to review these things.”
Then I thought, ‘It’s a new month. Rents. Payroll week. Big book bills… Do we have enough money in the main account?’
Better safe that sorry. I got up and hurried to the bank to make some transfers.
While I was out that way, I swapped a van at the Frederick store. That morning I’d gotten a memo that 175 linear feet of sports books was needed for a Books by the Foot order. That is doable with the three stores.
“With an emphasis on golf.”
That’s not doable.
So, while I was there, I did a heavy cull in the sports section. I’d sent Ernest to Gaithersburg to pull sports there.
When I got back, the manager told me she had gotten a clarification that the order was actually 175—1 foot orders—surely for rooms in a golf resort. That meant we could send lots of duplicates. At the warehouse, we have hundreds of copies of some golf books. Home run.
I think.
Then things really got out of control. A potential supplier who goes through millions of books called and wanted to talk about sending colored books that he would otherwise pulp. So, we reviewed the website over the phone with me explaining what we needed and what we don’t need. It took about an hour.
Then I got pulled in a half-dozen other directions and never got back to the bank statements.
When it was time to leave, I was fried.
I went home and had pants sitting on my new shiny black driveway.
One for me. One for the dog. One for me. One for the other dog. Two for me…
It was a very Zen-like episode?
But maybe all those peanuts were what kept me awake all night.
There are no comments to display.