The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me,
…
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

---

March is near.

The sun is warm again.

There is light in the evening.

No longer darkness at noon.

The frail snowdrops bend their death-white heads.

Aconites hold sunlight in their fists.

Green life emerges from cold earth.

Emerald fingers stretch through dry dead leaves.

Face the warm light of new life ahead.

Upon your back is cold winter’s shadow.

Hope for a season, two, three.

Til all-conquering freezes kill again.

The cycle of hope and despair weigh heavy.

Wear the optimism now.

Enough rounds teach the inevitable outcome.

I know you, Spring.

You have seduced me often before.

Shall I succumb again?

Only to succumb again.

Evening quiets birdsong.

The sun at dusk, cold as winter,

drops behind the mountain.

Day dims to dark, and chill overcomes.

I know you, Hope.

Shall I follow you one more season?

---

She found a disbound copy of Night-Thoughts. The calf boards gone astray. The spine and text intact. Cast aside as waste, it was rescued from oblivion.

“Look what I found!”

I smiled, casting aside the cynicism that I’ve seen thousands before. For this was seen with new eyes and by proxy took me to a time when that poem and others like it were first seen. In the other poem, my youthful “discovery” of the ancient churchyard described two centuries before was as new as spring. Two sights never seen before.

An artifact from another age, describing its content by its state.

“Save me,” it pleads.

“Save me.”

Tomorrow March arrives.

Time begins again.

The sun will warm as well as brighten.

I must brighten as well.

Life demands it.

There is no choice but to give its due.

Let it carry me through blooming greening months.

Ignore the inevitable ending looming ahead and being pressed at from behind.

“The paths of glory all lead to the grave.”

---

The trip to London, Below Suspicion, was finished this week.

John Dickson Carr’s London of 1949 was a gray place of societal breakup and deprivation.

“All electric and heat and gas had to be turned off at 9 every morning.”

The protagonist, a wealthy lawyer, looked in disgust at the two sausages on his plate served by his ancient housekeeper. They would be “filled mostly with meal instead of meat.” His 18th-century dining room in Cleveland Row “seemed to wear a frosty rime.”

For entertainment, people waited in a long queue three abreast outside the London Pavilion, waiting to get into the cinema. “They did not speak. They did not move. They waited patiently, dull eyed in the aching cold, for the hour or hours before they could scramble inside for some escape, any kind of escape!—from grey life.”

Dr. Fell: “Let us look at the intolerable dreariness in the life of the average man to day… Even if he has money he cannot buy anything. There is nothing to buy. He stands in long queues for cigarettes, when he can get any. Even newspaper-advertisements jeer at him, caroling that So and So’s Custard is noblest, but that he can’t get any because so many people want it.”

London 1949. Dark, dreary, wet. Crimes that weren’t dreamed of before the War are rampant.

But the lawyer can take his beautiful client to Claridge’s for lunch where the old world still has a foothold.

Sadly, the plot does not hold to its early promise, and finishing the book was more chore than enchantment.

---

Temperatures are soaring into the 50s.

I’m in bed with another cold.

I never get sick.

Like so many things, that has changed.

I left work Sunday around 2. I was out of gas. Sore all over. Coughing. Sneezing. Yuck.

At least no one was in the vicinity.

So much to do, but what’s the point?

Like digging a hole in the sand on the beach, your work will quickly be backfilled.

I wanted to cut wood. Explore the greening gardens. Thousands of green fingers—daffodil shoots—are rising from the earth all around the property.

No. I dragged myself into bed and tried to write. Uninspired. (Where did that go? I know. It followed you.) The dogs jumped up and flopped next to me.

Then I noticed there was a Caps game on Sunday afternoon. I really longed to “cheat” and get up to watch it.

I kept my promise and forced myself to write, knowing I could rewind the game and watch it as though it was live.

I made an early dinner of comfort food. Buckwheat pancakes and maple syrup. Why haven’t I made these for—what—a couple of years?

So easy.

The small paper sack from some rural Pennsylvania grinding mill was unopened.

So easy.

I made some extra for the dogs.

The game was thrilling. Ovechkin scored a Hat Trick (3 goals in one game.) After the third goal, hundreds of fans threw their hats onto the ice from the stands. He’s only 12 away from the all-time record set by the Great Gretzky. No one thought that record could be broken. I’ve been going to Caps games for 15 years or more. Hockey is a beautiful sport. Almost balletic in many ways. But there’s a lot of physicality and speed. Long sticks that launch hard rubber discs at a hundred miles an hour.

I crawled into bed early.

Sleep. Cough. Sneeze. Read.

Is this the new normal?

No trips planned. Last year was Portugal, Turkey, Northern Italy, Paris, Dublin, Scandinavia and the Baltics and, with finality, Amsterdam.

---

It is a beautiful day. Sunny. Spring-like. It will be in the 50s all week.

And, of course, I feel like crap.

Ernest is driving us to Gaithersburg. I’m wearing a mask. I don’t think I’m infectious.

I want to see how the demolition is going. I haven’t been down for a week.

I suspect, like spring weather, the renovations will be completed and sprung on me unawares.

I’ve ordered bookcases. But so far, no firm layout has been made. I’m not getting much help. Everyone’s too busy. If it turns out ok, I’ll get the credit. If not—the blame.

I was supposed to meet my older son and his older baby for dinner Friday, but I didn’t think it wise. If the little boy got a cold, I’d get the blame.

The latest crisis—or continuing crisis—is the shortage of books.

I hope it is the bad winter and ice and snow and that with this wonderful weather, thousands of boxes will be sprung upon us.

Like Venus on the half shell brought forth full-blown, the situation will change to one of too many books to fit in the building.

Venus—Botticelli—London. I long to go.

The dogs can spend the day outside in their “chalet”, basking in the sun.

---

We are on our way back.

Things look great. It’s exciting.

My head is on fire.

So it goes.

Just buck up, Chuck.

It was just a year ago I was surprised to see that the venerable Washingtonian magazine did a feature on “Cool Jobs”, and Wonder Book was included.

A year ago, I was “cool.” Now I’m cold.

Well, maybe today I’ll get warm. I turned off the heat in the house before I left. No reason to run the furnaces at 56 degrees when it will get up to 56 outside today. I’m not ready to open the windows, however.

I get an email that Mocha is the “Color of the Year” according to Pantone. We need to pay attention to such things to predict where the designers are heading this year.

---

64 degrees. Bright. Calm.

I’m home in bed. It’s 3 p.m. I left around 2. Out of gas. Sore joints. Not much coughing though. I did get a good number of carts done.

A friend came in this morning, and I let take her scrap vintage bindings and loose sheets. Things we would be pulping.

She makes things with them. She sent a thank-you card after her last visit. She picked out two big tubs of paper “stuff” out of the Vintage Strip Gaylords.

(Now don’t start wringing your hands and calling me the Butcher of Books. These are cheap old books. Falling apart. Disbound or partially disbound. If there was enough to work with, we would glue them back together. But all the king’s horses and all the king’s men…)

How would a horse put a scrambled egg back together?

I think she enjoyed the couple hours’ respite and diversion from more mortal crises than anyone should have to face at once. Simply picking up pieces of books to rescue. The stuff would have been recycled anyway.

To see things others pass over and find value and purpose in them. It’s like having new eyes.

“Book Bits and Pieces Rescue.”

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
…
Every Night and every Morn
Some to Misery are Born.
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight.
Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.

Hey… maybe I can market things like this.

Well, we already do. Our stores are full of rescued printed plates and boards and marbled endpapers priced and put in bags and pinned to walls and bookcase endcaps…

One of the carts I was going through had a disbound late 19th century West Virginia college yearbook. No binding remained. Just a battered text block.

“I bet she’d like this.”

When I rolled a finished cart back, I held it out to her. The rear had pages of old ads. The photos of students on sports teams or in their formal pose or at play—they are worth it for the hairdos!

Weird coincidences bother me. A small box arrived full of old Charles Dickens editions. Nothing valuable but nicely curated. It was from the sister of a high school classmate.

She included a letter that states, in part:

My wife has early-onset Alzheimer’s… In her younger days, she collected books by Charles Dickens…

There are first editions in parts. Some of them may be worth five figures. How many hands have these Dickens’ firsts passed through? Where next?

Another sad story of love and decline and dismantling what had been built.

I’ll try to help them get the best results for the beloved’s books which must be parted with.

I’m in bed looking out the window at the wondrous weather. How I long to be out playing with wood and soil and plants and rocks. But I need to shake this thing. Exertion triggers the coughing. The coughing irritates my lungs and sinuses. And I don’t get better.

The Argentinean bookseller is visiting this week. He comes every year to visit family. A few years were missed due to COVID. He shops the stores, buying 1000 books in each at a deep discount. It’s cool to think of our books going to stock a shop so far away.

My wacky nephew pressured me for a visit. I think he needed money for a buy he was anticipating. He has a good eye and picks up things—uncanny things. He brought a little sack of chunks chipped off the Berlin Wall after the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

Along with the colored concrete, there were photos of the perpetrators hammering away.

I was in Berlin last summer and, for a longer visit, a couple years ago. The Wall is so evocative of man’s inhumanity to man. Walls are usually built for defense. This wall was built to keep people in.

Then he wanted to chat. He is not that much younger than I. His father was older by 15 years. His mom, my onetime sister-in-law, is now aged and failing in the usual ways. Another sad ending in a week of sad stories. He wanted to go out for a beer, but I didn’t feel up to it.

Pip is back after nearly a week away. I needed a break. Maybe it’s the weather, or maybe he’s glad to see me and Merry and Giles, but he is full of spunk. The little loving critter is running his normal routes outside. Still a soft cough which will not get better. Likely only worse over time until… 14 years we’ve shared the life on the mountain.

---

It is Wednesday. I’m feeling a lot better. But that happened last week too. My joints are not weak and tired. I canceled two doctor’s appointments because I didn’t think they’d want me in their offices coughing. My regular doctor’s assistant called back and said to come in this morning for a swab test. It’s kind of late, I think, since I’ve had this for over two weeks. Even if the second “cold” is new, I’ve had that for almost a week.

Ernest and I are going to the Frederick store for 60 feet of “Well Read Lit and Biography.” (“Well Read” means kind of beat up.) BUT… dealing with designers all these years, we’ve learned what their parameters are. Designers are VERY picky. (Can you imagine that?!)

Purge and fill. Purge and fill.

---

Now it is Friday.

The last day of a brutal February.

The sunrise was glorious.

Graveyards have been another theme this week.

This story opens with Grey’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Then the discovery of the Young’s Night-Thoughts cast aside as pulp. Both are examples of the Graveyard School of Poetry. Those guys were precursors to the much more famous Romantics that were to follow. The Romantics view of death could sometimes be summed up in “leave a beautiful corpse.” William Blake illustrated both those poems. (Only one volume of Night-Thoughts was completed before funding ran out.) Another example is Blair’s “The Grave.” Blake also illustrated a large folio edition of that.

I bet you don’t know many guys who have a William Blake apron.

Perhaps this is a better example for something so serious.

The week began in a graveyard, oddly enough. A nice first edition of “In Flanders Fields” came to hand last Saturday.

A Canadian first, appropriately enough.

The facsimile manuscript of the poem which is tipped in after the copyright page oddly uses “grow” instead “blow” in the first line.

Grow is the natural rhyme, but blow is what makes the poem a masterpiece to my mind.

In Flanders fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Perhaps blow was the original “typo”? I hope not.

Despite the viruses, I did get out in the gardens some this week. As a diversion, I went and bought a truckload of mulch. Last evening, I dragged some off the pickup truck with a rake and pitchfork. It wasn’t heavy work, but it was pleasurable.

It felt so good to be out.

February was lost to ice, storms and illness. I hope March will bring a seasonal shift to my life.

So much to do.

I met the contractor at the Gaithersburg store yesterday. The wall may come down this weekend.

The existing store is on the other side of that.

He is a shelving magician. One of his nicknames is the “Shelfmeister.” With his 50-foot tape measure, we began the first phase of the layout as to how the new space will be used.

The LP bins will go against the far wall. Then a double row of glass cases for collectible books will be built.

Then…

So spring will begin with many, many new bookcases filled quickly with books pleading for the space.

That will keep me busy.

For a change.