1/1/26

It is the third hour of the new year
All is dark and silent
The orange eye of the fire
glows in the other room
My home is warm this frigid night
I cannot hear my heart beat
Nor the blood surging in my veins
A new year. Undiscovered country.
The far future has come
I remember the distant past
As if it was yesterday
Faces long dead are alive
Behind these closed eyes
Perhaps… perhaps… perhaps…
No, it could not be
Sing softly angel
Speak comfort divine muse
I would my mind was comforted
As my body is this frozen night
Wrapped in warm soft cotton and wool
Calmed by the dark silent still night
For that is all I can feel
Warmth and softness enveloping me
No sight nor sound nor taste nor scent
Just a disembodied mind drowsily floating
in the past, present and the distant future of dawn

This poem was scrawled on the paperboard back of a legal pad. I had to write around two notes:

• “Gretzky”
• “Great Room floor”

I have no idea what Gretzky was about, but the “Great Room” floor was resurfaced nearly 15 years ago. When I bought this place, the “Great Room” was actually a large carpenter workshop. The owner/builder of the house was a master carpenter. This house is built solid.

And dawn has brought unexpected snow.

Damn! It is beautiful.

Damn! Will I have trouble getting down this morning?

20 degrees. The most common temperature of the past month.

The snow was almost three inches. But it was so cold that it was crunchy not slippery. With white knuckles and some divine appeals, I drove down without incident. The county road was clear. It didn’t appear to have snowed down here at all. The weather can be quite different where I live. Sometimes better. Sometimes worse. It is only one mile… and a few hundred feet of elevation.

We were lightly staffed on New Year’s Day. Liberal leave policy.

None of the three stores needed van swaps, so the limited staff on hand focused on internal projects. (The stores were open. We only close for Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

I focused on carts and exploring. Suddenly, we have spaces opening up here and there.

The Big Project continues. This next phase is a search for things that they haven’t already acquired from us.

We found these beautiful Bleeker Atlases.

They are beautiful. They are huge. I guess they could be called “white elephants”, only they are full of fish images.

I bought them maybe 20 years ago. I’ve never had luck moving them. But they are just too beautiful to do away with.

I also discovered a pallet of Barbara Mertz/Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels books.

How they became separated from the others that came from her estate in 2013, I have no idea. It was a happy discovery, however. Like running into a dear friend unexpectedly.

The day fled swiftly. I had no trouble dating checks and documents that needed to be filled out “1/1/2026.”

Books by the Foot had a strong month. Up over 20% from December 2024. I wonder if our quirky social media posts are attracting new customers. The most popular post now has over 800,000 views on Instagram and doesn’t seem to be slowing. Plenty of the other posts have garnered 5-figure views. Not bad for “old books.” December is supposed to be a weak month for BBTF. Most of the designers are on vacation. They tend to work months or even seasons ahead. Perhaps that bodes well for 2026.

All 3 stores are up as well, though the final figures aren’t in yet.

I’d asked my friend, the retired doctor, if he wanted to meet for a beer. It has been too long since we’ve done this.

I’ve been too busy.

Too busy for a friend is not healthy. I guess I’m an addict.

“Hooked on books.”

I’ve been in every day since returning from Scotland in September. That was a great trip.

We sat at the bar at Glory Days as we have done so many times since it opened 25 years ago. We talked about friends and family. His kids are a little older than mine, but he has the same holiday visitation issues I have.

We picked up some books from his house a week or two ago. He’s downsizing his wondrous collection.

Those will be fun and expensive. (I’ll snag that folio of The Little Prince for myself. I collect those.)

He’s still buying some new releases.

“Hooked on books.”

We chatted about departed friends.

We chatted about the golf trips we took together. Walking Carnoustie, Troon, Prestwick, St. Andrews…

Glory days. Gone now.

Then he had to go. He had to get ready for a party.

I stayed and ordered the Thursday special. Ribs, chicken fingers and two sides. I had a second Natty Boh.

I didn’t really want to go home, where it would be cold and there was no party. But the dogs needed their meds.

I put on a DVD from An Age of Kings. This old black-and-white series in 15 parts encompasses Shakespeare’s Richard II, Henry IV (1&2), Henry V, Henry VI (1,2 & 3) and Richard III. The cast includes British greats. A young Sean Connery as Hotspur. Robert Hardy (Harry Potter’s Cornelius Fudge.) Etc…

I’ll be lost there for a week or two.

Then I slept for a few hours and awoke and could sleep no more. So I reached for Sleep No More. It is a vintage horror anthology edited by August Derleth and features stories by iconic writers like M.R. James, John Collier, M.P. Shiel, Lovecraft…

Now the sun is up. There’s still snow on the driveway.

It is January 2nd. There are books to be discovered.

New Years Eve 2026

I got home early. Merry had an urgent vet appointment. When I got home Monday night, he wouldn’t get up. I carried him outside to go to the bathroom. He stood unsteadily. Then I carried him back inside and set him on a fluffy dog bed. He did eat his medicine—stuffed into a little dollop of liverwurst.

Tuesday was much the same. He did this once before and then magically recovered. I went to work. I wondered if he would be dead when I came home. He was alive but still prostrate. I called the vet, and they asked if could get in at 3 on Wednesday. I took him to work that morning. He walked, although unsteadily. He greeted his friends in the office and followed me out to his pen on the warehouse floor. When we got to the vet, he was pretty much recovered. Wheezing heavily, to be sure, but walking normally on his leash. When the vet came into the waiting room, he stood on his hind legs and wanted to play.

‘You little bastard,’ I thought.

I explained that he really had been ill, unable to move.

The vet was very nice and is familiar with me and the two coughing Jack Russells. The diagnosis was: “Mystery.”

If it happens again, I’ll see if the threat of a visit to the vet inspires another miraculous recovery.

So, I got home early. After letting the other two dogs out, I put on my cold-weather yardwork clothing and went out to knock down the rest of the briars with the weed whip. I was interrupted the day before by the plastic string running out. It was getting too dark to continue anyway. I’ve been so busy with work I wonder if I’ve done much of this at all for the last two years. There were hundreds of the scraggly red prickly things further down the front yard. I need to be careful because amongst them are baby redbud trees, which I don’t want to knock down. That’s why it’s important that there’s enough light. It helps that the briars have reddish skin and are… scraggly. When the whip hits one, there’s a bit of a thump, and the inside of the beast is bright green. Most drop conveniently to the ground, and I can step on them and move on. Some are mature enough to have branched out though, and they will often snag on my pants or other clothes, and the prickers can sometimes find their way into my flesh.

“Dammit!”

Once entangled, I need to do a little dance to get them off me.

Finally, I was done. There was the satisfaction of a job too long put off accomplished.

Then the big blue two-wheel recycling container was hoisted into the pickup truck and driven down the mountain to the county road. I’m sure they won’t empty it on New Year’s Day, but why risk it? Every other Thursday is the schedule, and I had let it get pretty full. I wouldn’t want to carry it back up filled.

On the drive up, I stopped and pulled 8 or 10 stones from the frozen earth along the roadside. I’ve brought hundreds of stones up the mountain over the years. I use them for walls and borders. It gives a feeling I’m making my land bigger, my mountain higher with each rock I carry back up the gravel road.

There was still some light left, and I drove the truck onto a trail where there was some firewood that had been cut last winter. Might as well harvest it. It will just rot otherwise.

That’s how I celebrated New Year’s Eve. I used to dress up and go to parties—sometimes in a tux! I used to look pretty good.

This one, I heated some leftover pizza and put on a movie.

About 10:30, I put a couple of logs in the fire and crawled into bed with Giles. M&P were coughing and got relegated to the pen in the laundry room.

Sunday night

It has been the strangest Christmas.

The Christmas that wasn’t.

I kept myself so busy that I didn’t note its passing.

Until now.

There have been so many Christmases.

It is not unlike the year 2025. So much happened. I kept so busy. Records were set in every aspect of the book business, which now defines me. The record breaking—record shattering, actually—is nice. But it signifies nothing but hard work and the passage of time.

Time. The night is aging. Damp. Dark. Cold. Dreary. I let the dogs out. I closed the door on them and stoked the fire. The house is in disarray. My housekeeper is gone. I don’t need to redd up the place for her any longer.

My few remaining friends wouldn’t want to visit this time of year. Ice and snow, wind and rain, now are the winter of my discontent. If I work that much harder, the discontent is not as noticeable.

When I went to the door to let the three dogs in, all were seated on the wooden porch. All were focused on the same spot out in the blackness. There was nothing to see. But I thought I heard the clucking of a tongue. Does any bird cluck near midnight?

Doesn’t matter.

“C’mon, boys.”

Three heads turned away from the woods and toward the light pouring out the open door.

They hustled inside without looking back.

The weekend was very quiet. Many of the staff had asked off.

Holidays—they sure mess up productivity.

But I got a lot done since there was no one to interrupt me.

When I got in Sunday, there was no one there.

Odd.

I texted Travis. His phone had died. He’d arrive in a while. But I had the place to myself. Just like Christmas Day, I was alone in the vast warehouse.

I had a pallet from an old friend’s collection carted up on Friday. We cleared out his house when he moved to assisted living 7 or 8 years ago. A lot of his books are problematic, i.e. tough to sell. Big portfolios with old yellowing architectural plates. City planning prospectuses. But this batch had a lot of his books on book collecting. That’s always fun—for me, anyway.

And he had a lot of obscure foreign language books on architecture and design.

“Groan.”

On a cart of signed books, I found this treasure.

Our House. Graham Nash’s love song to Joni Mitchell, whom he was living with at the time.

The lyrics are a facsimile, but it is signed by Graham Nash at the rear.

“I’ll light the fire…”

I light a fire every day.

Young love. It is always a memory, as you’re much too busy when you’re in the midst of it.

“Come to me now and rest your head for just five minutes…”

Monday

Bryan is driving us down to Gaithersburg. I haven’t seen the store since the last bookcases were added. All these months of something pressing to be done there, and now we can finally catch a breath.

But that’s no excuse. I’ll look for something to panic about when we arrive and I walk through.

I need something to do.

I need a sense of urgency to feel relevant—needed.

It looks great. The staff is happy. The customers are in awe. 9 out of 10 refuse assistance. They’d rather explore.

“Let us know if we can help you find a category or anything.”

I’m so proud of it. I hope it lasts another 50 years.

Tuesday, December 30. It is 25 degrees and windy. Winds howled and whooshed all night. I just curled in a fetal position under the bedclothes and struggled with worries and dreams and hoped a tree wouldn’t fall on the house. I’ve had any worrisome trees close to the house removed. But you can never tell. A tree may appear healthy above ground but have a root disease that renders it not firmly bound to the earth.

A dark gray sky rises out of sight as dawn barely lights the world. Cold winds will blow all day, and the temperature will not rise above the 20s all day.

But mostly I am worried about Merry. He is the big strong brother of the littermate Jack Russells I’ve lived with nearly 15 years up here. His brother, Pip, was quite ill in the fall. Lung problems that numerous doctors couldn’t get under control. At one point, I despaired. He couldn’t walk, and death seemed imminent. Then something happened, and he rebounded to “frail.” So he is today. Yesterday, it was Merry. He’s had a wheezing cough for months, but the various meds seem to keep it in control. Yesterday, Merry couldn’t rise. He just lay there dull-eyed. I carried him outside. He spent the day on a bed of towels in his pen. When I got home last evening, I half expected him to be gone. He was alive but just clinging. Immobile. Dull-eyed. I burst into tears when I saw him and cuddled him gently so as not to trigger his coughing. Then I called the vet who will see him today.

New Year’s Eve.

Frigid. 20 degrees. At least the howling winds have stopped.

I have no party plans. How could I?

Last night, I watched Master and Commander. It is a seafaring tale based on Patrick O’Brian’s lengthy series of novels. My friend John Adams turned me onto them when I was going through a nautical phase in the 90s. I’d read all the C.S. Forester books and delved into Dudley Pope and some of the others. Those authors were in vogue then, and their books were highly sought after by armchair seafarers.

Now? Not so much.

It is a beautiful and magical film set in the South Pacific wilderness. Without giving away too much, it touches on the Galapagos, and Ralph Vaughan Williams threads through the soundtrack quite a bit.

It was evocative in many ways—as the spectacle on the big screen and my history with it over all the years.

Johnny, why did you have to die so young? We were such comfortable friends. Soul mates in many ways.

That afternoon, I pulled the trigger on travel. I’d put it off for so long. My last trip was to England and Scotland in September. That was great fun. Then the Big Project engulfed us from September through… now. It still continues.

Travel…

I’ll go back to Egypt, but to sites I haven’t seen before. From Alexandria to Abu Simbel.

Wales.

Croatia and Albania.

Berlin—for ILAB conference.

Switzerland—I haven’t been for over 20 years, and that tour was self-guided and included small children.

Then what? I think I can manage more.

When I got home last night, I got the orange Husqvarna weed whip out and toured the grounds, mostly knocking down the scraggly briars that are about the only things that grow among fern carpets. When the ferns die down, the weeds are exposed, and I can make my way among the rocks and trees and boulders and stone walls and cut them down near ground level.

Then it was time to choke and prime and yank the cord on the Husqvarna blower. Leaves and other debris flew ahead of me as I guided the stuff into the black forest.

So ends 2025. It was a wonderful year. The Gaithersburg store. Curtains on my windows and so many pictures hung. The Big Project—we will never see its like again. And growth in all facets of the book business. Wonderful finds and discoveries and treasures for me to shepherd in my time until…

And the void. It is no longer an aching void. That’s scarred over. Like the memory of an amputated limb. You look down and it is gone. Never to return.

They say that soldiers often feel they have a phantom limb as if it was still there.

So it is. In dreams I can be complete.