Halloween morning.
Patches of ground fog down in the valley. 61 degrees out. It will get to 79 today, perhaps.
I’ll vote on my way in this morning. Maryland early voting ends today. I might not be able to make it next Tuesday. This will be a first. I’ve always voted on Election Day. Oddly, Maryland only offers a week of early in-person voting. My mail-in ballots came unasked for a month or so ago. Plural because I received one for the guy who lived here before me. He moved to Tennessee 14 years ago. At least I didn’t receive his wife and daughter’s ballots as I have since COVID changed all the rules. Early in-person voting in nearby Pennsylvania began in early October. Virginia, just across the Potomac, started early voting September 20th.
So now we have Election Season—kind of like Christmas Season. Costco had trees up for sale in September.
The line was pretty long. A 30-minute wait. Many of the adults were dressed in Halloween costumes—on a Thursday morning. Mostly witches for some reason. One woman up ahead was acting out in a loud voice for her captive audience.
“The literacy rate in West Virginia is 47%. Look it up! I lived there…” She continued an ongoing commentary of derision about the people in that neighboring state.
She said things I’d never get away with. Nothing overtly political, however.
A witch.
Then I was back out in the sunshine.
When I pulled into the warehouse, there were a dozen or so men on the roof.
When I parked and got out, Hispanic music from a radio was pouring down from above. The songs are invariably ebullient. Inside, the music continued, muffled by the thin roof. Footsteps above. The scream of saws. The banging of other tools. It’s been like that all week. It is a huge project. Hugely expensive. Six figures, and maybe only a quarter of the roof is being replaced.
The sun is gone from my life. The last sunrise on view until next spring.
For now, it is November. 5:30 a.m. There are more lights visible in the valley. The trees have shed half their leaves, and I can see through the now semi-transparent canopy. I rose to get water and let Giles out. It is raining. The first rain in quite a while.
Good. I won’t have to carry water down to the fifty or so seedlings I transplanted in the last week.
Giles felt the rain, turned around and trotted back inside.
I worked late last night. There have been so many distractions that I’ve fallen behind. Behinder than usual.
Carts of books. Push. Down. Turn it around. Roll it away. Repeat. A dozen or more in order to get ahead for tomorrow—which is now.
There was nothing thrilling until I spotted the word “Gout” on the black leather spine.
I extracted it for inspection, assuming it was a mid-19th century medical book.
My old friend Brillat-Savarin, whose grave I visited in Pere Lachaise in Paris last spring.
“Gout” translates to “taste.”
The little gem will polish up nicely.
I have no idea where it came from. It’s not from one of Larry’s house calls. The antiquarian books he brings get segregated as I pay him a higher bounty for them. Bad. Indifferent. Good. And, rarely, great.
Rare books are rare. There’s no fixed ratio here. And it depends on what your definition of rare is.
We sort through 400,000 books a month. Maybe more. It’s impossible to count.
Then there are the records and CDs and DVDs. The ephemera and prints. The non-book objects.
Larry handed me this yesterday afternoon. He was coming across the parking to get a check. I was leaving to meet the surgeon.
Certainly a museum shop reproduction. But it is very heavy. Maybe bronze. I barely glanced at the evocative thing.
The Light of the World.
I love it.
An old high school friend emailed me that Denise passed away last month.
The image flashed in my mind of a pretty nubile teen. She was one of the “Wonder Girls”, though they weren’t actually called that. Their orbit often interacted with ours. The “Wonder Boys.” We actually called ourselves that.
Denise dated one of us. The moody broody serious one who affected… I wonder what happened to him. Lost touch long ago.
About twenty years ago, she reached out to me. We would go out to lunch every couple of months and catch up on things. Past. Present. Future.
She had a lung transplant, which gave her all those years in between.
The last I heard, she was in isolation during early COVID. Her kids couldn’t visit.
Then things got crazy. Then crazier.
I sent a couple of emails and never heard back.
Friday
I let Pip out. He was coughing a bit, and I thought I should give him his medicine. The rain has stopped. He scented something and went dashing off out of the light cast by the porch lights and into the blackness beyond. I called him back urgently. He’d be no match for just about anything out there any longer. I heard his rustling before I saw him reenter the arc of light—the light of home—an aura in the vast darkness.
He’s a little better, but still not what he was a year ago. At least he is running now. And most nights, has few coughing fits.
Leaves cover everything.
And the trees have only shed about half their leaves.
It has been a warm fall so far. Yesterday was in the 80s. It is 68 inside now due to the residual heat absorbed by the house yesterday.
I just texted Gerry the soccer tickets for London tomorrow. Queen’s Park Rangers versus Sunderland.
I had to cancel my trip due to my lingering arm injury from being hit by a motorbike in Amsterdam just over two weeks ago. I was looking forward to it.
He is sending me pictures from the Tate and his fancy meals that I was to be a part of.
Dawn has come. The eastern horizon is rosy.
(That image is not enhanced by me.)
Most of the potted plants have made their way inside. They still need to be arranged. Set into clay saucers or onto plates. Placed atop junk books so the dampness can’t get to the carpeted or wooden surface below.
I should take a bunch in and sell them at the bookstores.
Wonder Book & Plants.
I went to the Hagerstown Wonder Book on Wednesday. It’s been a while.
It looks great.
We have created large 5/$5 sections for books, children’s books, CDs, DVDs.
It is an experiment to see if that helps the people up there with affordable entertainment, and the volume is viable for us.
Friday morning continued.
In a cardiologist’s exam room waiting for the new doctor. My old doctor’s gone. I need clearance to get surgery on my arm Monday to drain the balloon on my left forearm.
It all became a rush suddenly.
When I returned from Holland nearly two weeks ago, my whole arm and hand were swollen and purple. I’d been struck in an unmarked bike lane and thrown to the ground. My regular doctor saw me the next day. They cut off the bandages the Amsterdam ER had put on and looked at the thing with wide eyes. There was nothing to do but wait for the swelling to go down, he said. I went in every other day. Over the next ten days, the swelling went down on my hand and much of the forearm. The color returned to normal. Except around my elbow. There’s a big purple hematoma that hasn’t gone down. It is grapefruit size and as firm as a grapefruit.
“I was hoping it would drain on its own, but I think I need to send you to a plastic surgeon. I’ve contacted him, and that office is expecting you.”
I made the call, and they saw me the next afternoon.
“I’ll make a small incision here and drain the hematoma… ten minutes probably… Yes. You can return to work the next day… If we don’t take of this, the arm can become…”
“GROAN!”
The cardiologist just gave his approval.
Why so fast?
The surgeon said that was the best day for his scheduling.
So the whirlwind spins faster suddenly. So much to do.
The dogs.
Work.
Supplies.
Screwing my head on straight about this.
Stuff…
Last weekend seems so long ago.
Larry dropped off a big load on Saturday. He included a stack of leather coats and a lot of framed items.
Ernest found an Alice in Wonderland collection which we are holding, hoping there may be more.
I pushed myself and went through dozens of carts.
That’s a lot of books for the stores and internet. The Books by the Foot were left on carts to go north to that section.
I rediscovered the big wooden chest that came across the plains from Hinsdale, Illinois to San Marcos, Texas in 1878. My grandmother was a baby in that covered wagon. My great grandfather Talmadge built a grand Victorian house on Melvin Street in San Marcos. It is now a landmark.
I asked both boys if they wanted it as a family heirloom.
I saw both grandchildren over the weekend. Had dinner with the one-year-old who is hilarious and suddenly very mobile. The next day, I saw the newborn at my younger son’s birthday gathering in Pennsylvania.
Several evenings, I had enough energy to dig up seedlings and plant them in the beds that were new last year but in which I failed to put many perennials. Transplanting 50 or so hosta, hellebore, lungwort, Solomon’s seal… really didn’t take very long. The soil I put in is loose and friable. It is just a matter of gouging small trenches to set the babies in.
Then I fill those in with loam.
But I’m often so tired when I get home that I can only make a simple bachelor dinner—often just reheating leftovers.
Maybe residual issues from the accident.
Do you remember when new books were 17 cents?
I don’t either.
What about a Ross Thomas mass market for a quarter?
Crown Books. The giant which crushed all the independents 4 decades ago.
“Books cost too much!” was their tagline. Young Bobby Haft was the leader. The back of The Washington Post Book World featured a full-page ad of him sitting atop a “throne” made of books.
Crown got crushed by Borders and Barnes and Noble.
Big box bookstores and the remaining independents got crushed by the new World Wide Web in the late 90s. (Barnes and Noble has somehow managed to survive.)
And here we are.
A contract for a big new store. (Still in a study period.)
An agreement for ten more years in Gaithersburg and the possibility of more space there.
And me. The walking wounded.
The roofing contractor asked where he could dump the ballast stone.
I had no idea it would be so much. A river of rubble.
A package from Alan James Robinson arrived today. It has been quite a while. He has been ailing from many things.
Two copies of The Birds and Beasts of Shakespeare with original watercolors of a wolf and an owl.
And two copies of An Odd Bestiary with original watercolors of a hippo and a walrus.
Loose in sheets.
Should I get them bound?
And this signed first of Curious George Learns the Alphabet.
I loved Curious George when I was a child.
It is a beautiful first of November. Almost 80. A gentle balmy breeze. Life is good.
Let’s see what next week brings.
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