It is Friday. I didn’t finish the Baltic States story. It is about halfway done. I’m sorry.

Next week.

The sun is sliding south. In a few weeks, the sunrise will be in view from my house for a while before it continues south and the sunrise is blocked by the forest.

It is 53 again this morning. Will we have an early fall?

This week has battered me.

I’ve worked constantly but haven’t made progress.

I’ve gone home every night and done some kind of yard work. But then I’m too tired to get anything done inside.

My humble meals have been leftovers from the freezer. I haven’t eaten out once this week. Four times last week was too much.

Yesterday, I ran away from work in the late afternoon. It was only a half hour. I went to the recycling center and bought a truckload of wood mulch.

It cost $8.59.

When I got back to the warehouse, Larry was there with another great load. This time, science fiction and fantasy.

I glanced at it excitedly and then let out a deep sigh. It was another burden piled atop me. Maybe the gods are punishing me for asking for too many books. Their punishment: “If he wants books so badly, we will give him an infinite stream of them. Like Sisyphus, his task will never be done.”

We had 75 boxes dropped off by Lorne’s people earlier. His team are excellent booksellers. I peeked into some of the boxes. Good stuff. They must have too many good books flowing in as well.

I emailed them:

…I imagine you’re drawing in mid level as we are (peeking in some of the boxes dropped off today.)

I wonder if this a Golden Age—as so much great stuff is surfacing.

Or the beginning of the end for mid and low-high level material.

The good news is our stores are kicking a##.
Numbers we haven’t seen since the 90s!
A whole new demographic are walking in the front door…

I had one of the Gaylords of very old books sent to us by a mega-online seller loaded onto a cart for my review. 5 carts. About 150 vintage books per cart. 750 books, and each one needs to be inspected. I went through two carts. I didn’t find any treasures, but I did pull off about 60 that were too good for Books by the Foot and should go to the stores.

The Wind in the Willows. Jean Cocteau. Sporting books. Striking bindings…

Only five more pallets to go through. (Plus the 3 carts I couldn’t get to.)

Then much of the day was spent doing the carts I usually work on.

Such wonderful stuff. But frustrating in the volume and the fact that when I roll a cart away to work on it, another appears in its space.

I paged Annika to come get a couple of tubs that I wanted her to research. An Elijah Muhamed (Malcolm X.)

And…

Someone’s Limited Edition Clubs are coming in. They are beautiful books and some can be very valuable.

During the depression years, many of the world’s greatest artists struggled to find regular work and a large number were employed by Macy.

Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Edward Ardizonne, Thomas Hart Benton, Rockwell Kent, Reginald Marsh, Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham, Norman Rockwell, Edward Steichen and Grant Wood are just a few of the artists connected with the Limited Editions Club.

Other highlights include the editions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass that were signed by Alice Hargreaves, who inspired the books as a child. The typography is also exceptional and involved masters of the age. Each book is a work of art in its own right.

Sadly, most are difficult to sell now. Many “classics” have not withstood the test of time.

That’s a LOT of really big books. (Look closely—guess how many are white elephants.)

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Tuesday, August 20th

58 degrees outside. The high will be 72.

Perhaps the roaring fans at the warehouse finally get turned off. You can’t hear anything with them on.

The stresses of the end of last week and the weekend weighed on me. I felt crappy all day Monday.

When last week’s story was cut off, the Frederick store was in the midst of renovations. The place was torn up.

You gotta break eggs to make an omelet.

19 new wooden bookcases were installed in the western section. When the glass doors are installed—soon, I hope—we will be able to greatly expand our collectible and rare books. I asked another big glass company to come out and give us an estimate. A week later, they called back and said they were too busy.

“I already found someone else. Glad you’re so busy,” (It is a $9000 project!)

The giant glass and metal display cases were emptied and realigned. Now they have their own gleaming row.

The deep wooden bookcases that display mostly puzzles and games were moved to the back wall, where they act like a colorful attraction to draw people to the rear of the store. (The younger generation is returning to boards games and jigsaw puzzles much like they have returned to other physical media: CDs, DVDs, Vinyl, VHS, Books.)

A lot of old wooden bookcases were removed for these changes. They were stuffed in the old box truck.

There’s no place to set them up at the warehouse.

Except…

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“beep… beep… beep…”

The noise became part of whatever I was dreaming for a while.

“beepbeep… beepbeep… beepbeep… “

‘The alarm on the Honeywell Atomic Clock?’ I wondered, coming to consciousness. ‘I’ve never set that.’

“BEEPbeepbeep… BEEPbeepbeep…”

I curled up, thinking it would stop at some point, but the beeping got more intense and louder. It was dark, and I was too tired to deal with it. I reached over and pressed the button on top of the round silver plastic thing.

It stopped, and I curled up, drifting back into unconsciousness.

“beep… beep… beep…”

“Snooze button. The housekeeper must’ve turned the alarm on while dusting yesterday.”

I never use it.

I turned on the light and tried to figure which buttons stopped the alarm. I pressed one after the other, thinking I couldn’t make it worse. Finally, the alarm icon, a tiny flashing bell, went off.

It is Wednesday, and my head has not been happy this week. Sometimes it’s all too much.

50 degrees outside. 62 in. Delightful.

Too many tasks I’ve piled upon myself. Too many people wanting little pieces of my life. Too many things I don’t want to do demanding my time and energy.

Yes, and too many books vying for my attention.

I worked hard this weekend. I worked hard last week. I’ve made so wonderful finds.

I made a pilgrimage to Brillat Savarin’s grave at Pere Lachaise in Paris in June.

When I left Sunday night and saw how much was left for me to do, it made me ill. Really.

The new office and conference room project—a necessary endeavor—gapes before like a bottomless canyon each time I pass.

Today, we meet with a realtor to decide if we should make an offer on a building for a new bookstore.

Why?

When I got home last night, the housekeeper was still here with her daughter and son. Weird.

I wanted to stay out of the way, so I put my sweats on and emptied the firewood out of the truck. Then I used the pole trimmer to prune more branches that have grown up into my view of the valley below. I gathered the fallen boughs and dragged them to the brush pile I maintain as a habitat for small birds and animals.

By then, she was done and rolling down the mountain. I waved goodbye. It is nice to have my house put in order occasionally. She dusts and polishes everything.

Like the clock. And, I once found, to my dismay, the temperature control knob on the shower. The water is always “just right” unless someone messes with the knob, and no one else uses that shower. (I always test that now the morning after she’s been here.)

I’d cut and loaded the wood Monday when I got home. Feeling sick and distraught, I thought it might help reset things internally.

It did.

When I drove the truck back up the mountain, I strapped on the 40-pound Husqvarna blower and cleared the debris off the drive and walkways. The recent storms knocked a lot of leaves and twigs and branches down.

I felt better for the evening.

I finished the last Rumpole book—Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders. The writing is delightful. Mortimer answered a lot of questions he’d teased at over the decades. The matter of his marriage to Hilda—”She Who Must Be Obeyed”—was explained. Although the character Rumpole was never “young” I think, the story of his early legal career finally put a foundation to all the stories and cases that “followed.”

He ends a chapter, “I don’t know what you think about being young. To me, it’s a time of growing used to disappointment.”

Firewood… the first fire in the woodstove isn’t much more than 6 weeks away. I like the heating season. It gives my life a pattern and ritual to follow. I follow the process and see and feel the results.

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Ernest is driving us to Hagerstown.

It is a stunningly beautiful day. Azure skies. 65 degrees.

The landscape is green from the recent rains.

I’m going to the store mostly to get away from the pressures at the warehouse. At the store, I can mindlessly cull duplicates and old stock. Physical “work.”

I’ll have to face the unwanted duties eventually, but I can run away a bit longer.

Avoidance.

The summer has been backward. Dreadfully hot in June and early July. Fall-like coolness in August.

It reminds me that the world is backward right now.

Wars. Disinformation. Brainwashing. Dumbing down. Flagrant crime.

I live in a bubble where everyone reads books. But even there…

It is hard to understand people who believe some of the “news.” Switch channels occasionally.

Well, it will either get better or it won’t.

I’m not optimistic.

It won’t matter any way. The next generation can deal with it. Good luck.

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Remember the “Angel of Death” house call I went on a couple of weeks ago? We processed the 4 pallets of books. We found some old photo albums and diaries in with the books. Turns out they were longtime customers. I’ve found books they bought from me in the 80s. I contacted the estate attorney, and she’s going to pick up the personal stuff. No, I didn’t read any of the diaries. I only glanced at the photo albums until I recognized who they were.

The recognition added to the sadness. But reading his online obituary and wiki page, I see they had a full and eventful life. Teaching at Georgetown and Oxford. Travel. Living overseas.

There’s that to mitigate the ending of it all.

And grown kids who wrote lovingly in the funeral home remembrance “book.”

The books weren’t great. But they were attractive. A lot of vintage stuff for Books by the Foot but nothing rare.

Still, it was evocative to see the slice of old times at Wonder Book and recall the customers who, the way I remember, always came in as a happy “couple.”

This penciled price is in my hand. The “Y” beneath the numbers dates it to about 1985.

Back then, we used a secret date code on books. We first used GALSWORTHY. We would advance to the next letter every 6 months. After GALSWORTHY, it was BUCKINGHAM. Somewhere in BUCKINGHAM’s reign, we converted to mechanical pricing guns. (Because we could finally afford them and because the increased volume made writing in every price by hand take too long.) Now our date codes are transparent. August 2024 is 8 4.

Things were finite in those days. No warehouse. We didn’t take in more books than we could store in the backroom—or sometimes my garage at home.

The growth has been slow and steady, but between now and then it is exponential.

Was I happier then?

In some ways.

Did I ever dream…

Yes. I used to dream of having all the available books in Frederick. Then in the DC Region. Then in the world.

It wasn’t greed. It was the challenge to rescue as many as humanly possible with whatever resources there were at the time.

Now my dreams are more personal, and they show no sign of going away.

When I think back and I push disappointment away and remember how lucky I was, I will curl up. A soft Mona Lisa smile will form on my lips in the black loneliness.

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The visit to the Hagerstown store went well.

We will expand all the 5 for $5 sections since we can’t have them on the sidewalk any more. (Insurance rules, according to the landlord.)

When we got back, we had a meeting. There may be big news coming about Wonder Book, but I can’t tell you yet.

We got 6 pallets of antique books from a mega seller who has been pulping them because they don’t sell well online. I haven’t inspected them closely, but if it works out, it could be a great new source for us and a win-win-win for both companies and the books.

And we got 93 pallets of new books too.

That’s a lot!

#bookrescue

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It is Thursday morning. 53 degrees. All the windows in the upper part of the house are open.

I complained how difficult and frustrating last weekend was.

Part of the problem was half of Saturday was taken going to my daughter-in-law’s post baby shower get-together up in Pennsylvania. It was a good family get-together, and I got to meet some of her extended family.

But there was a huge backlog of books tugging at me 50 miles away at the warehouse. I was away on the Baltic so long and the subsequent illness slowed me down even longer.

Well, I had all day Sunday.

Half of the Angel of Death collection had been carted up on Saturday—the vintage and problematic books.

And Larry has been bringing in collections all along. He’d teased me about an aviation collection that had some Lindbergh books.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Several hundred early aviation books—many signed and inscribed. World War I pilots. Generals.

And then… signed Lindberghs.

About a dozen so far.

The Corrigan signature is “Wrong Way” Corrigan.

Douglas Corrigan (born Clyde Groce Corrigan; January 22, 1907 – December 9, 1995) was an American aviator, nicknamed “Wrong Way” in 1938. After a transcontinental flight in July from Long Beach, California, to New York City, he then flew from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn to Ireland, although his flight plan was filed to return to Long Beach.

Corrigan claimed his unauthorized transatlantic flight was due to a navigational error, caused by heavy cloud cover that obscured landmarks and low-light conditions, causing him to misread his compass. However, he was a skilled aircraft mechanic (he helped construct Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis) and had made several modifications to his own plane, preparing it for his transatlantic flight. He had been denied permission to make a nonstop flight from New York to Ireland, and his “navigational error” was seen as deliberate. Nevertheless, he never publicly admitted to having flown to Ireland intentionally.

Well, by Sunday’s end, there was still a large herd of carts awaiting my attention—including more of the aviation collection.

Depressing.

I think the stress of too many great books and the huge renovation project at the Frederick bookstore and the “big news” and the impossibility of getting everything got to me.

And the 5000 military books 45 minutes away.

And the collection of Nobel Prize winner offprints.

And…

I was numb. Paralyzed.

And it is Thursday.

And I need to bump down the mountain and face it all again…

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Some pretty books came in the mail.

If you’re familiar with Doves Press, you can imagine what a perfect copy feels like.

And I finally forced myself to do some potting and repotting.

After, I sat at the top of the steep driveway. I can’t bring myself to toss golf balls down for the dogs to chase anymore. Oh, how they loved fetching them. Their lungs… The new meds aren’t knocking the cough and wheezing out. It all happened so suddenly.

So I filled my hoodie pouch with shelled peanuts. I crack one for myself. Then one for Merry. Then Pippin. I toss theirs down the on the asphalt. They scurry around nose to the ground, snuffling til they detect each tiny nut.

That is a peaceful contemplative thing to do.

August 19

There is no mercy at 3 a.m.
The world should be at rest
Day should hold the hours of consciousness
No problems can be solved in lonely darkness
That is not the time for labor
There is just the lying in the blackness
and listening to the empty silence
No. One should be somewhere else then
In dreams where the dead return to life
Or impossible creatures appear and make perfect sense
Or the nothingness of unconsciousness
That place where one is not dead
but for warmth and breath
one shows no sign of life either