55 degrees outside at 6 in the morning. What a treat!

I came home last night in the mood to work.

First, the pickup was emptied of mulch.

Then it was time to knock down 100s of scraggly berry briars in the fern brakes. I have to do it before the ferns emerge from the earth. The first weed whip ran out of string after 20 minutes. The second did as well. It was getting dark, and there wasn’t enough time to reload them. The third trimmer was also empty. I’ll be winding the heavy plastic string tonight in the barn on all three machines. Indeed, the temperatures will be in the 50s and 60s until mid March.

I was confident enough to take the ATV down to the gravel road I share with my one neighbor (a half mile away.) I don’t think we will get any more snow that will need plowing. The plow was angled sharply, and I plowed gravel from the roadside back on to the road. Some of it gets kicked off to the side by being driven upon. Most got plowed to the sides in the numerous snowstorms we had this winter.

I hope there are no late March snows…

The last freeze isn’t predicted until late April. I’m already anxious to get the 70 or so potted plants outside and reclaim the parts of the house they occupy in cold weather.

Time speeds up in spring. Every day new green begins appearing everywhere. They are just a prelude to the symphony that will start building in strength and power.

It is Wednesday, March 5th. The month has gotten off with a BOOM at work as well. I met with Clark on Monday to review February’s store sales. All three were up significantly over February 2024. Gaithersburg had an especially strong month. People are discovering the hidden gem after 50 years in its less than desirable location.

That adds to the confidence that the dramatic increase in space which is coming soon will be a good move.

Boom! The wall came down yesterday.

I’ll go down today to meet with the landlord’s contractor to explore the next phases.

Brainstorming resulted in a wonderful but bittersweet decision. The contractor who builds our bookcases is busy and wasn’t confident he could deliver a lot of new bookcases in a hurry.

“Hagerstown!” the epiphany struck me.

That store still had over 70 full size bookcases dedicated to DVD rentals. Their revenue has declined so much over the years to the point where they were only kept out of sentiment and inertia.

We will continue renting new releases and catalog DVDs in Frederick, but yesterday we pulled the plug in Hagerstown. That will free up nearly four score perfectly good bookcases, which we can quickly transfer and erect in Gaithersburg. In Hagerstown, we can send down a lot of 8-foot tables to expand LP sales and also display more audio and video electronic equipment.

Whew! What a “windfall.”

The three dogs are dozing on the bed next to me. They are happy about the warmer weather.

There are only about 10 blank pages left in journal #28. I may just pull the plug on that and begin #29. Turn over a new leaf as it were… LOL.

I began the journaling December 31, 2013.

Most of the journals are of varied bindings, but I think the average is over 200 pages. Do the math.

And this blog will be posted for the 399th consecutive Friday. Some weeks had more than one story. So there are now 448 blogs from me.

I mention this in case you’ve fallen behind.

So, maybe I don’t write so well, but I certainly do write a LOT!

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Ride the whirlwind…

There are times I need to throw myself into the breach.

The Gaithersburg expansion suddenly reached a fever pitch.

Things had to be done NOW!

Or else…

What if I just walked away?

Ernest is driving us back from Hagerstown. We pulled 2 vanloads of rental movies out yesterday—Wednesday. Today, Thursday, we are returning with vanload #4. Clif took vanload #3 back earlier in order to bring more tubs and a fifth empty van.

Such big changes in Wonder Book’s little world. Seems monumental up close and personal. In the scheme of things, it is just books and movies going from one place to another.

Ernest and I focused on pulling books for Books by the Foot after I gave my input on the dissolution of our Hagerstown rental inventory.

The load behind me is about half books and half movies.

We should have 60 bookcases empty by tomorrow.

Those can be taken down pretty quickly and transferred to Gaithersburg.

All it requires is time and the right kind of people and transportation.

I’m tired. The three-week virus is lingering with occasional coughing fits and suddenly running out of gas.

I can’t leave early today. I’ve allowed a whole herd of carts to back up.

“We need carts.”

“We need tubs.”

“We need a van.”

“We need kids’ books.”

“We need…”

We ended up getting three full loads out Thursday. 30 years of Hagerstown video rentals in 5+ van loads.

Lots of memories…

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Now it is Friday.

I am tired and sore from the work and perhaps the lingering viruses that have me in coughing fits in the morning and before going to bed.

Today will be a monstrous melange of books and building projects, worries and concerns, new arrivals and old culls, people problems and stores calling out for attention.

“We need…”

I was tired and achy when I was going up the mountain on Thursday evening. Dusk was dropping like a slow theater curtain. Maybe an hour before dark. I just wanted to go inside and snack and make a drink. But there, near the top, was a new stone wall!

“He did it!”

The charming landscaper who does the mowing and plowing at the warehouse and many other people’s places had said he would get around to it when he had some slow time.

Not much grass growing or snow falling this time of year.

The three pallets of stone I bought from Irwin’s stone yard had been a languishing eyesore for a couple of years as I tried to convince myself or other people to stack the squared off stones and make some order out of chaos.

I will pile soil behind it and plant… something that will peek over the wall and give me pleasure when I am all but home.

Is this the last wall I’ll build?

It feels like it, but perhaps some bit of land will speak to me and demand another one. There are about 20 walls—I should count them—that I have put in. 6 or 7 during the dark days of COVID alone. Some stone I purchased from the stone yard. Most of it, actually. It is just so easy to put a tag with my name on it onto the heavy wire wrapping of 800 pounds or 600 or 900 pounds stacked upon wooden pallets and brought up in a big truck that has a crane attached. The crane can lift and set the stone anywhere—as long as it is not more that 20 feet off the drive. The COVID walls were mostly rock I took from the roadside on the mountain and carried up in the ATV or the pickup truck. Then there was the period a few years ago during the construction of the new warehouses when the contractors, excavated for the foundations, exposed and broke up escarpments that had been buried for millennia. Those made very jagged garden walls.

Carrying stone up a rocky mountain seems counterintuitive, but it is yet another thing that calls to me.

Wood. Stone. Soil. Plants. Trees. Fire. Ice. Rain. Sunrises. Black nights. Roaring storms… Silence.

So often silence.

I couldn’t let the opportunity pass despite my body’s complaints. I wrapped the plastic string round and round the spool and reattached the head of the gas trimmer. Ear protection. Eye protection. The machine sputtered to life after a few pulls. I rose and carried it down to the gardens like a 21st century thresher.

The target is hundreds of single-stem, red, prickly berry bramble sprouts a foot or two high. They are ugly and invasive and nearly impossible to get to once the ferns and flowers are up.

So I trod among the stone and trees and good plants to knock down the grasping red devils. I was lucky not to twist and ankle or worse in the poor light. In an hour, I think I got most of them. I’ll find out when I go out this morning.

The last two days have been monstrous. The decision to salvage the nearly new, underutilized bookcases in the Hagerstown location and transfer them to the new expansion in Gaithersburg brought a lot of Wonder Book forces to bear.

Vans. People. Tubs. Coordination. Loading. Unloading. Processing.

Wednesday, I went to Gaithersburg to inspect the progress. Ernest drove us.

The wall is down!

Here’s a sneak peek.

I was to meet with the landlord’s contractor, but he was held up by the heavy rains and winds. I left notes with the manager, Patrick, to coordinate in my stead.

Wandering through the cleared out room, I was now able to visualize more what I thought would work best.

I think we have a handle on the layout.

We will have 100+ fresh bookcases for Gaithersburg customers before long.

While we were waiting, I went into heavy culling mode. A lot of books will be shifted in the next month or so. There’s no reason to carry duplicated or dated stock from one location to another. Plus, Books by the Foot has a lot of unusual orders.

Win—win.

Work. Work.

Meanwhile up in Hagerstown, the die had been cast. We began pulling the DVD rentals off the shelves—about 25,000 of them.

It is bittersweet. We opened a used book and video rental Hagerstown location in 1995. It did very well, although there were always problems—Hagerstown problems. But that’s a story for another time. Clark was especially sad. The videos have been his baby since he started as a teen. But the poor numbers for rentals in February helped make the decision clear.

The rentals were not covering costs at any level. They were filling 70 bookcases that would make the Gaithersburg expansion timeline move up dramatically.

The last-gasp banner I had put up got cut down.

A letter to the customers was drafted and posted on the doors.

30 years of video rentals in Hagerstown was coming to an end.

(We are still renting Blu-Rays and other DVDs at the Frederick store. The numbers there are much stronger. Each week, new releases are put out for customers who prefer the superior product of Blu-Ray and 4K over streaming.)

The plan for Thursday was to get all the shelves emptied and all the DVDs transferred to the warehouse. Many of the rentals are rare or out of print or otherwise unusual and will go online for sale.

All the stores will continue selling DVDs as well as CDs, LPs, VHS (!), audiocassettes and whatever other “obsolete” media is experiencing a revival.

How many vanloads would it take to empty the rentals shelves?

5 and a half as it turns out.

Vans… I just ordered a new one. #11. Arriving Monday.

Thursday, Ernest and I drove up. Clif and Andrew took a van up. We filled the van that was there. Clif took that back to Frederick and brought an empty van back laden with tubs. Ernest and I had book orders to pull, and then our van was filled with books and movies, and we went back. They filled the third van and returned. The mop up filled half a fifth van, and then the movies were gone.

I was exhausted and had a brief coughing fit when we got back to Frederick.

But no rest for the weary. There was a huge backlog of carts waiting with my name on them.

I did as many as I could before I dragged myself home for the yard work.

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It is Friday.

The sun is pouring over the bed covered with three dogs and my reading and writing debris.

Though it is 30 degrees out, the sun does warm the bed a bit. The dogs loll wherever the sun hits.

Spring’s promise is playing in soft green notes everywhere. Soon, it will race by so fast it will take my breath away.

I’m going to see the Caps tonight. I’ve been on a binge buying concert tickets. Dylan, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, James Taylor, Little Feat, Leo Kottke… who else? Bill Murray! He has some kind of gig at the Warner next November. Why not? Who else?

If I can’t bring myself to travel quite yet, I can go places… while I can.

But I’m sure I’ll be flying somewhere this year.

The sad deaths of Gene Hackman and his much younger wife have been reading like a cautionary tale. 95 years is a good run. That number is still very, very far away should I be permitted to reach it.

I once rode in an elevator with him and his co-author. He was promoting his new book at the once enormous Chicago Book Expo. We were staying at the Drake. (I’d like to go back. I love that hotel.) It was cool to be the only other one on the antique wooden elevator and eavesdrop on the book strategy.

Last weekend was all books. My viral remnants had my legs get rubbery by midafternoon Saturday.

So many great books.

The most beautiful came from my friend and spiritual book advisor Ken Karmiole—now semi-retired.

You might like this. Are you familiar with the 19th century British book illustrator, and color printer Owen Jones? I just acquired a very pretty copy of his The Book of Common Prayer. London: John Murray. 1845. Full morocco contemporary binding, “gilt extra” as the English say. An excellent example of chromolithography. I would price it [XXXX], but [XXX] to you?

A beauty.

I’ve got to shower and get the dogs ready.

Today will be a busy day. All Fridays are. This one has the added dimensions going on (See above.)

How many more all-consuming projects will Wonder Book have?

How many more times can I throw myself in the fray and command my tiny army to do this, move that, go here, take this there, … ?