It’s watching two of our four grandkids, the four cats, one nuisance of a dog, and the house. Cook, taxi, housekeeper. Doing okay, though I keep forgetting about one step down from the entry to the living room, which is dark and dangerous. May have to put a rug down or something.
Saw our daughter, son-in-law, and two middle grandkids off this morning on a 10 day mission trip to Belize. Here’s hoping all goes well on their end, and ours.
Tried to write today but couldn’t get much done after the hubbub of this morning. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.
And hopefully my Friday post will be better as well.
All our letters from the years in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps not the best way to preserve them, but I think it will work.
Time for my Monday blog post. I recently finished reading one book, and abandoned another. But I’m not quite ready to post reviews on them, so I’ll set them aside for now. What to write about?
Recently I’ve written about two special projects I’m working on. One is scanning and e-filing poetry critiques I did at internet poetry boards. The other was transcribing letters from our years in Saudi Arabia with the intention of putting them in book form for our family’s use. The scanning project still has a lot of work. I am unlikely to finish it before the end of summer.
But the Saudi letters are well along. In fact, I finished transcribing them on May 9. I then set about transcribing the travel journal from our 1983 Asia trip. I finished that on Tuesday, I think it was. That gave me a chance to breath and concentrate on the other project. In an intense three days I finished scanning the smaller of two remaining notebooks and thumbed through the other to separate the critiques from miscellaneous writing.
Letters and postcards stamped many places as our time as expatriates included travel.
But the work of the next part of the project—loading the Saudi letters into a Word document and making a book out of it—remained. While the transcription work was somewhat daunting, I knew the book organization would also be as well. But I had to get started. Saturday evening, Lynda and I were watching something on TV. I decided this was a perfect time to multi-task. I opened Word, created a document for the book, and began to copy and load the letters into it.
I discovered an easy way to do this on my laptop. During a one hour TV program, I was able to copy in all the letters from 1981, a total of 65 letters. They ranged through all twelve months, but most were from June (when I went to Saudi before the family) to December. I was pleased with the progress.
Sunday night, while watching two programs, over about an hour and a half, using this efficient copying process, I was able to copy in all the letters from 1982 and 1983. This was 159 additional letters, making for 224 for our Saudi adventure.
Unlike the letters from the Kuwait years, this collection includes a fair number of incoming letters from family and friends.
I felt good about this and sat back, feeling a weight off my shoulders. Then I remembered that I had transcribed three letters from 1984. That was after we were back in the States. But these were letters from friends from our years in the Kingdom, from people who recently left for their home or were still there. That will bring the number of letters to 227, close to the same number as the Kuwait years.
As the document now sits, it consists of 102,000 words. When I add in the travel diary and the last three letters, it will come to about 109,000. That compares to 112,000 words for the completed Kuwait book. But once I add an introduction, and bits of commentary along the way, I suspect the word count for the Saudi book will be closer to 115,000. Strange, perhaps, that the two books should be so close to the same length. Sure, we were in both places almost exactly the same amount of time, 2 1/2 years each. But in Kuwait we had a computer and tended to write longer letters. I expected the Saudi book would finish out shorter than the Kuwait book.
For the Saudi years, we had a lot more incoming letters in our collection, the bulk of them from our two maternal grandparents. When we were in Kuwait, both ladies were too old to write, and indeed both died while we were there, a week apart. But we also had a phone part of the time in Kuwait, which tended to reduce the number of letters by a little.
So what’s next? First, adding the three letters from 1984. Second, adding the travel journal from 1983, which must be spread out over the dates the entries were made. That will actually be a mere hour’s work, which I hope to accomplish today. Next will be writing an introduction. Probably another hour or two. After that, the commentary to be spread around the letters, giving a little context to what was going on in our lives. That’s going to take some time, and I’m not committing to a timeline for completing it.
After that will be proofreading the whole thing. I’m not looking forward to that. It’s tedious comparing the transcription in the book to the original letters. That will take a couple of weeks. Last will be adding photographs and putting the book into publishable formatting. I’m thinking of doing that in late July and August when I’m convalescing. Oops, I haven’t told you about that, but that story will have to wait.
If all goes well, I should have the book finished and published before Christmas. I’ll print off enough copies of it then unpublish it, but leave it uploaded to Amazon just in case the family wants more copies.
Thus, I see this second letter transcription project coming to an end. It was sort of a labor of love, with perhaps a little more emphasis on labor than on love. Will there be another transcription project in the future, maybe of the couple of hundred pre-Saudi letters Lynda and I sent to parents and other relatives? Almost certainly, but don’t hold your breath. I need to breathe a little first, and concentrate on my regular writing.
It was good to see our son, and attend a Woo-Sox baseball game.
From May 11 until just the wee hours of May 23, Lynda and I were on a road trip back to New England. The posts you saw during this time were written ahead and scheduled to go live at my normal posting days when I knew it would be difficult to post.
Lots of good memories on this trip.
The reason for the timing of the trip was my 50 year reunion of graduating from URI, which was held May 17-18. Of course, other reasons exist to go back there. Our son now works at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. While we have seen him regularly at our place, we hadn’t to where he lived for close to three years. Also, I have family in the area, friends in the area, who I hadn’t seen since 2015.
Too many good meals. We both gained weight on the trip.
The trip took much planning. Number of days to drive outbound. Where to stay. Which reunion events to attend. When to hold a family gathering. What kind of buddies gathering we could have. Who to meet up with outside of the main gatherings. Where to stay in New England. When to head home. Many pieces to fit together. I tried to arrange for several other meet-ups, but people were unavailable.
The full gathering save two: one who left early for a birthday party, and Mario, who took the photo.
Surprisingly, all turned out well. I booked hotels for the 3-day outbound trip. Always before we’ve taken two days for this drive. When we neared our hotel the first night, Lynda thought it was ridiculous to stop so soon. But stop we did. A traffic tie-up the last half hour made the early stop seem closer to normal. The next day, the early stop seemed more normal. And getting to Worcester the third day seemed totally normal.
We had several days of meals with our son, who had to work every day. We saw the house they’re staying in, lots of the Holy Cross campus, and his office. I wouldn’t say we learned a lot about Worcester, but what we did see we like.
Many changes at URI campus. I toured the new engineering center.
On Friday it was to Rhode Island for the reunion. Part of the day included a stop at the library special collections, which I’ll tell about in a future post. It was good to be on campus. I took time to go to the Memorial Union and visit old haunts, including the student senate chambers, where I spent so much time junior and senior years. My main complaint about the reunion was it wasn’t very well attended.
The Student Senate chambers. I wonder if that’s the same carpet from 50 years ago.
Saturday was our family gathering, partially catered and partially potluck. We had twenty attend overall, including a surprise visit by my half-sister, who flew up from Florida for the occasion. She got to meet family members she didn’t know before. This was a good time for all.
Lynda and I then rushed back to R.I. for the last reunion event. Sunday was a visit to the cemetery where my family is buried and a tour of places in Providence and Cranston, Then off to Cape Cod for two days, then reverse course with a stop in Worcester on the way out. The drive home we did the old-fashioned way: freestyle, with no plan and no reservations.
The first day heading home, I routed us over the new Cuomo Bridge north of NYC, just because I wanted to see it. Big mistake. That cost us close to an hour lost to heavy traffic. We stopped for the night in central Pennsylvania. The next day we ditched the stopped we had sort of planned at the Columbus zoo and just kept driving. We made it home around 1:15 a.m. Thursday morning after 18 hours of driving.
The trip was good. Maybe this was our last long driving trip. It sure took a lot out of us. Had we flown it would have been 9 days instead of 12. But it was a good trip. Good to see the old house and schools, friends from long ago, and family.
Trip 2 is coming soon. Not near as long a drive, but maybe the same number of days.
Genealogy papers on the left, Saudi letters (from 1982) on the right.
With the after-effects of the stoke having slowed my typing, I’ve now for just under a week been back to writing. Typing is still slow, but improving. It’s good to be back in the saddle. That doesn’t mean just on writing, but also on two special projects.
One of those is continuing to scan my genealogy research papers and safe them electronically. I’ve blogged about this before.More than half of my notebooks are culled and the contents either digitized or discarded. But all the easy parts are done. Most of what’s left are for the four family lines I spent the most time on in my research. I’m having to go through them more carefully. Some of the papers, mainly original documents I obtained, I’ll still save after scanning.
I worked on this last Friday and Saturday. I found that my electronic file saving system works, but also that I had a lot more folders to add. Saturday, beginning work on a new notebook, I realized I had in it mainly ancestors for whom I had no electronic folders. Since my folders are alphabetized first on Ahnentafel number, and also indicate the generation of the ancestor, it takes some time to get the folders properly created. Most of my time Saturday was spent on folder creation and organization, but did get some papers scanned, saved, and discarded. I also managed to scoop up about a half-dozen sheets that needed filing elsewhere (i.e. not in a genealogy notebook that’s a keeper) and got them filed. It’s those stragglers that are always a hindrance to keeping my work area clean.
The other special project is transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, 1981-1983. I did this for the Kuwait years, 1988-1990 (and some after that) and put them in a book for family members. I blogged about that several times.
Now I’m on the Saudi letters. It’s quite different. No displacement due to war; the kids were little so no letters by them; no phone so we wrote more letters; but no computer so they were all handwritten.
I collected the letters into one bin and collated them some time ago. In early January (I think it was), I began transcribing 1981 letters. They were all done except for the two Christmas letters we sent that year, and one or two more, when I had my stroke. So, before I started back on my writing work, I knuckled down and, with my right hand still typing-impaired, got them done about a week and a half ago.
The total count for the seven months in 1981 was 53 unique letters. There were other items in the bind, but mainly empty envelopes and duplicate letters, where we photocopied a letter and sent it to several people, usually with a personal note attached.
I pulled out the box of letters for 1982 in preparation for the next phase of this task. I counted 75 letters, I think it was (some of them postcards), and some possibly duplicates. A few envelopes felt like they might have been empty. The stack for 1983 looks about the same size.
I don’t have a deadline for either of these projects. The end of 2024 is sort of a loose goal, and, I think, very doable so long as I don’t get lazy. And so long as my regular writing and home upkeep doesn’t overpower my time.
Dateline: Monday, January 15, 2024, Martin Luther King Jr. Day
I was about ready to leave The Dungeon and go upstairs, grab my sledgehammer, and fix the modem that way. Fortunately, our internet came up before such drastic repairs were needed.
It’s my regular blogging day. But I woke up this morning to find we have no internet. Thus, I can’t get to the blog to type in a post. I’m writing this on my computer, and will post it whenever the internet comes back to us.
Actually, it has been a horrible weekend for technology. Friday evening our cable kept going haywire. Picture breaking up, sound breaking up, occasional total loss of signal. We suffered through and saw a few things. Wound up streaming something via Amazon Prime, which worked. Or was that Saturday? The days are running together.
Anyhow, called Cox. They said they would have a technician out between 3 and 5 yesterday, and said it might involve a $75 charge. We had internet all day yesterday, but no cable.
The Cox tech was a no-show. But it snowed yesterday, a little over 2 inches, and the temperature never got above 1°, so I kind of understand why the tech didn’t make it. A call telling us that would have been nice. Alas, service providers of every type have ceased being proactive in communicating with their customers in this age of easy communication. Will it do any good to call the office today, on the holiday?
My post today was to be about January being off to a good start. I am one or two days away from the last editing pass through A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 1. Granddaughter Elise got the cover art done. So either tomorrow or Wednesday I’ll begin publishing tasks.
The first week of the year, while in Lake Jackson, I had a conversation with Elise about the next book in The Forest Throne series, and she read the prologue I wrote based on our prior conversations. She loved it, reading it aloud while our daughter was in the room and putting much drama into the reading. So a good start there on a project just a little down the road. Also, youngest grandson Elijah wanted to have a conversation about the fourth book in the series, which will be about the youngest child in the Wagner family. That book is planned for about four years from now. But we had the conversation and I got some ideas on paper. I may type them up and see what that future book will look like.
Sven months of letters from the Saudi years. The ones on the left are transcribed. The ones on the right to be done. It’s a big project.
I began transcribing the letters from our Saudi Arabia years. This was one of my realistic goals. On Fri-Sat-Sun, I typed five letters each day. I’m going to limit myself to five a day so as to keep the project from overwhelming me as the letters from the Kuwait years did. I have no idea how many total letters there are. As I look at the piles, it appears to be about 300, which is close to double the number in the previous project. But as we had no typewriter (or computer in 1981-83), the letters will likely average a little shorter.
I did a little reading for research for the next book in the Documenting America series. Not much, but a little. What I read, however, makes me wonder if I’m on the right track with this volume. I’ll discuss that more in a future blog post.
I also have made a good start on an author interview for a future blog post. Possibly today I’ll be able to pull my interview questions together and send them to him.
Well, our internet just came up, so I will wrap this up and post this. I’ll have to leave The Dungeon to go upstairs to see if the cable TV is up. I’m not optimistic. But I’m still optimistic in general about 2024. I still expect to see those realistic goals met. But we will see.
From vantage points such as this (a photo from around three years ago), Elise has had many opportunities to study my “cauliflower hair.”
By the title of this blog post, I don’t mean the week we’re currently in (though it’s been a good week), but rather last week, January 1 through January 8. During that time we made a trip to Lake Jackson, Texas to be with our daughter’s family.
The trip came about as a suggestion by our oldest grandson, Ephraim. He said since they moved into their house the first of November, because of his parents’ work schedules, they hadn’t been able to spend much time getting things into place in all the rooms. The garage was jam-packed with boxes, bookshelves, and who knows what. Could we please make a trip to Lake Jackson and help them?
I thought about it and decided sure we could. I’m not as young as I used to be and might not be able to carry furniture upstairs, but I could sure sort through boxes and arrange them better.
I thought at first we would make the trip between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but that didn’t work out. But it turned out they didn’t go back to school after Christmas break until Jan 4. So we drove there on New Year’s Day. The trip itself was easy. We went the fastest, not the shortest, way. That evening we mainly spent time with the grandkids.
The next day I got to work. As Ephraim had said, the garage was full of stuff. First, I found the broken down utility shelf units and assembled them. That gave me space to put some boxes and create a better pathway through the garage. I tried to interest a couple of the grandkids in the assembly and shelving of boxes, though that didn’t work out too well. I was able to clear paths to several bookshelves that needed to go inside into the kids’ rooms. Ephraim and Ezra, our no. 2 grandson, helped carry them into the house and upstairs to the bedrooms. They then spent a lot of time in the bedrooms arranging things. I continued to work in the garage alone.
The next day, I found boxes of books, carefully marked with the name of the grandchild or as adult books. I put them in a staging area and the kids carried them into the house and upstairs. I found a lot of granddaughter Elise’s art supplies, and got them inside. Once the books were on the shelves, the rooms started to look pretty good. The kids were all excited to find things not seen since late May when they moved into temporary housing in Lake Jackson.
Slowly, I labeled boxes that were unlabeled. That allowed me to put like things together. Cleaning products to the shelf unit on the west. Mary Kay stuff on shelf units on the east. I found a big box marked “boys’ stuffed animals”. I thought maybe they were too old for them now, but Ezra said, “No!”, and carried the box upstairs. I found such things as a plastic bin marked “anniversary clock”. Our daughter said they hadn’t had that displayed for over five years. I found the perfect place in the house for it and displayed it.
Adult books went on built-in shelves in the living room. They are very high, so you will only get them occasionally. Richard, our son-in-law, had to get pegs for one of the bookshelves, and I freed up a stuck shelf in another. By the end of the day Saturday, I declared the garage “organized” if not fully emptied. There was plenty of room for the four grandkids’ bikes. with walkways to spare.
I found time to interact with all four grandkids, including school drop-off and pickup runs. Reading the Bible with Ezra (12). A conversation or two with Ephraim (15). Elise (10) working on the artwork for my book covers, and Elijah (7) to play and read. I also found a little time each day to do some editing of my finished book, and some stock trading.
So I declare this to be a successful trip. On Monday we drove home through the rain but had nary a problem—other than it taking an hour longer than normal.
Oh, and Elise came up with something new. One day she came up behind me and said I had “cauliflower” hair. I suppose I resemble that remark.
It may not be selling, but at least my grandkids are reading it and seem to like it.
2023 was a strange year for writing. In some ways my output doesn’t seem very significant. But, then, the year brought many other things that pried me away from writing. We made six trips for family matters, Lynda had her heart irregularities leading to a pacemaker implant, home improvements led to the discovery of water damage that is taking much time to arrange for contractors to begin repairs.
Yet, I think I made some progress. Let’s see how it stacks up against the goals I published on January 6, 2023.
Edit and publish The Key To Time Travel. Yes, I got this done. Publication was in June.
Determine the structure of the overall A Walk Through Holy Week Bible study series, and whether it will be six parts or seven. It’s being taught in six parts over six Lent/Easter seasons, but I’m thinking it’s better as seven parts in books. I completed this, sometime in late spring. I settled on eight volumes rather than six or seven. All volumes are planned out and all chapters named.
Finish/edit Part 4 (what may become Part 5) of AWTHW.Finished this, and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
Finish/edit Part 3 (what may become Part 4) of AWTHW. Finished this (didn’t actually have much left to do on it), and it’s now on hold, waiting for earlier volumes to be finished and published.
Write Part 5 (what may become Part 6) of AWTHW, simultaneously with teaching it. I’m pleased to say I finished this. It actually became Part 7 in the restructured series. It was done a couple of weeks before the last class.
Start Part 1 of AWTHW, after determining the overall structure, of course. Not only did I start it, but I finished it and made one editing pass through it. Two more passes and it will be ready to publish.
Depending on how work on this goes, publish some or all of the completed parts of the study. I decided to hold off publishing volumes out of sequence, so all the complete volumes are waiting for Volumes 1, 2, and 3 to be published.
So far this has not found an audience on Kindle Vella. All 32 episodes have been published.
Start writing the next book in the Documenting America series. It will cover the years 1761 to 1775 and is tentatively titled Run-up To Revolution. Yes, I finished this. I decided to publish it to Kindle Vella, chapter by chapter. In hindsight that was not a good decision, as it has not attracted a readership.
One other item, which is non-commercial but which will be a book, is to start transcribing the letters from our years in Saudi Arabia (1981-1983). I don’t think this is something that I can finish in one year, given that it will be fill-in work when I have nothing else to do, but I’d like to at least start it. I’ll wait to start it, however, until I get a few more disaccumulation items done. No, I didn’t do this. The work of disaccumulation proved to be more time-consuming than expected. I made major progress on it, but I’m still a long way from done.
So all in all, I published only two items: one book, one book in serial format. Given the distractions, maybe that’s not too bad. And I did get a lot of writing done, even though it’s not yet published.
Time now to set some goals for 2024. That will be in my next post.
The loneliness of the long distance runner. Ephraim en-route to winning his 8th grade cross-country district meet.
Once upon a time, when I was young, my weight where it should be, my knees good, and I didn’t know I had an abnormal heart valve, I played football and ran track in high school. Not in junior high. The only team sports they had were basketball, baseball, and swimming. I was no good at those, so I didn’t play jr. high sports.
I did three years of football, two years of outdoor track, and one year of indoor track. Sophomore year I ran the mile. Junior year I dropped down to the half-mile. That was probably a mistake, and I wish the coach had advised me differently. I had endurance but not a lot of speed. If I was going to change distances, I would have been better in the two-mile. But that’s all in the past.
On a 1600 m run, freshman year.
My oldest grandson, Ephraim, is now running track. He does cross-country and outdoor track. In track, he runs the 1600 meter and 2400 meter. Well, that was in junior high. I imagine it’s the 1600 and 3200 in high school. He’s been running since seventh grade, slowly improving. We’ve been able to drive to see him run a few times, when they coincided with trips for other reasons.
When the family was here visiting over Thanksgiving, Ephraim said he wanted to run in the early mornings. I woke him the first day at 6:00 a.m., as he requested. We were outside the house by 6:15, and it was still dark, with some light showing in the east. I slowed him down, insisting he wait a little until there was enough light that cars could see him. He did about 1.5 miles that morning.
The sprint to the finish. Ephraim passed the kid on the right to take a higher finish in a cross-country meet.
The next day it was below 30° at wake-up time. I woke him, but recommended he run later. He decided he would do a time mile around 11 a.m. or so. I drove him into town, bought him some spikes, then we went to the public track. He warmed up and ran, with me calling out his lap splits. He finished the mile in 5:33, equaling his best time. Two days later, after Thanksgiving, we did it again. This time he did the mile in 5:27. I told him that my best time sophomore year was 5:15, so I still had him beat.
With his teammate from the girls’ team, after their boys-girls sweep of the cross-country district finals in 8th grade.
A couple of days ago, I got a text from Ephraim, saying he had just done a mile in 5:16 or 5:17. He then wrote, “I’m closing in on you time.” I told him he was actually ahead of me, because I did my 5:15 late in my sophomore outdoor track season, probably in May. So he did his time five months earlier than me, in the off season, in a practice run, not in competition. I said he would surely be well below my best this year. It wouldn’t surprise me if he were sub-5:00 for the mile before the season is over.
It’s been good to follow Ephraim’s progress as a runner. He’s obviously better than I was. I want to make sure, however, that I support him, not push him. If he wants to get better, I want to support him. If he were to say track wasn’t his thing and quit it, I would support him. I’m here to encourage and motivate him to be the best he can be, in whatever he does.
So I’m not here to live vicariously through him, but it’s a pleasure watching him develop as a runner.
Games were on the schedule over Thanksgiving week.
Oops! I didn’t make a post on Friday, the first time in a long time to totally miss a day. I’ve been late a few times, but I didn’t even think of the blog.
What captured my attention? Family. Our daughter, son-in-law, and their four children came in Monday evening and left on Saturday. Our son and his husband came in on Wednesday, delayed a day due to airplane troubles. We had the normal Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, followed by a 1.6 mile hike on a trail loop near us (part of the route is on city streets).
I call this puzzling behavior.
Some of us put together a 1,000 piece puzzle. Some played games. We had other meals and conversation. Once I got up early to get grandson #1, Ephraim, out on his run on our semi-rural streets. Two other times I drove him to a track in Bentonville, where he ran timed miles. The first time he equaled his personal best. The second time he beat that by about 7 seconds, setting a new personal best.
The 2009 photo.
With #2 grandson, Ezra, I drove to the airport on Wednesday to pick up our son and his husband. That gave us some time to talk. He also helped me work in the yard on Tuesday. He and a friend of mine about his age, Liam, helped me move some large logs, both cut and deadfall, and cut out some wild thorn bushes that encroach on the blackberries. He earned his money. I also had him doing some leaf blowing, which he seemed to enjoy.
The 2019 photo.
With granddaughter, Elise, I had a lot of conversation. We worked together on the plot of the next book in The Forest Throne series. This will feature the one daughter in the Wagner family, Elizabeth. Elise and I worked out a prologue and discussed various plot lines. Tomorrow I will put some of those into a word document, filed away for writing a couple of books from now.
The 2023 photo, perhaps never to be done again.
With my youngest grandson, Elijah, I had a good time with a little roughhousing. We read together, and I gave him his first word exercise, now that he’s in 1st grade. He’s still a lot of fun, and wanted to work in the yard like others did. Almost all the baby toys we had for the kids are too young for him (and obviously the others), so I’ll be getting rid of them.
In the late evenings, after the games, puzzles, or whatever, we watched back episodes of Shark Tank. The three youngest kids seemed to enjoy it a lot, as did some of the adults. Mornings started with 30 minutes of reading. Ezra chose The Fellowship of the Ring, which is certainly a challenge for anyone, let alone a 12-year-old.
Saturday morning, as our daughter’s family were soon to leave, I remembered we had not yet recreated the photo from 2019 of me and all four kids. We shot that photo because at that time, a popular Facebook activity was to post photo comparisons from 2009 and 2019, ten years later. In 2009, I was on the floor reading to Ephraim, who was our only grandchild at the time. So we did a posed shot of me and the four grandkids on the floor. We wanted to do that again, and we just did fit it in before the trip was over. This is likely the last time we will ever get to do that shot.
Saturday, once our daughter’s family was gone, we had a quiet day with our son (his husband having left on Friday for business). We watched a couple of movies, ate leftovers for lunch, read, and went out for a simple dinner. An early morning airport run on roads we expected to have some frozen stuff on them turned out to be easy. Came home, rested, went to church to an excellent worship service.
Yesterday. I got back into reading Thomas Carlyle’s letters. He was visiting places in his native Scotland. In a letter he named the place he was at and said that this place was a piece of the universe and the time of his visit was a section of eternity. The place and time, “is very beautiful; doubly beautiful to me whose head has long simmered half-mad with brick wildernesses, dust, smoke, and loud-roaring confusion that meant little.”
That’s kind of how I feel. The last week, Thanksgiving, was doubly beautiful for taking me out of my routines. Today I’ll be back at it: writing in the Bible study in progress, trading stocks, doing housework. But last week will always be doubly beautiful, and I will think about it for a long time.
This was an okay book, not great. Not sure of its truth. Will never read it again, so it’s gone, today added to the sale/donation pile.
Our efforts at dis-accumulating continue. Perhaps not as fast as needed to do a downsizing in this decade, but we make a little progress. The last month has seen the old postcard collection acquired in the mid-1980s, having been left behind in the house we bought, for $115. But the buyer wanted me to ship it to Houston and so didn’t want the small, steel cabinet. I was able to sell that for an extra $10.
Then Lynda decided she was willing to part with the Gulf War memorabilia she brought back from Kuwait in 1991. They were supposedly Iraqi items. I listed them on Facebook Marketplace, not being sure they would sell. After one price reduction, a mom contacted me. She wanted them for her son (maybe a teenager), who loves military stuff. We were able to arrange a transfer that was convenient to both of us.
But really, the big thing we need to part with is books. For a bookiphile, that’s like cutting your wrist. But we have to do it. Despite the number of books we’ve gotten rid of, we still have at least 2,000 books in the house. I gave one away at writer’s critique group last week.
One book obviously isn’t much; we need to do more. In our living room is a built-in bookcase. We are going to have to dismantle this to repair some water damage that appears to be from improperly installed flashing around the chimney. We have already removed some books from the lower shelves and piled them, to prevent them from being damaged and allow the bookcase to dry from a little moisture found.
As Lynda and I discussed it, she suggested that we get rid of a series of Bible study books that are shelved on that built-in. We went through one of those books together, and started a second. They aren’t bad books. I learned something from them. But when you have 2,000 books, and need to unload at least a thousand, I agreed with her to put those in the sale/donation pile.
I then suggested we also get rid of two books from the built-ins, the two books in The Bible Code series. We read these aloud together. They are an easy read because the books are not long, are well-written, and have lots of illustrations of where the Bible may have a code in the books of Moses. I say “may have” because, while the writer makes a good case, I’m not fully convinced it’s true.
At first Lynda balked. She was more accepting of the Bible code than I was and thought more of the books than I did. But then she agreed with me that we read the books, got something from them, and with all the other books in the house we were unlikely to read them ever again. So she agreed to get rid of them. I’ll move them out tomorrow.
I also have a fairly large set of magazines about World War 2 that I got from my dad. I had intended to read them, but it looks as if I never will. I have them listed on Marketplace and lowered the price twice. I think I’ll do so again and see if they will sell. Also on the getting-rid-of-block is my collection of WW2 history books. They are all good. If I had a shortage of books I would probably read all of them again. But, with a book surplus and a shortage of years ahead, I think they will also go up for sale.
Six Bible studies, two Bible codes are a long way from 1,000 books. A good sized box of magazines, and perhaps ten war books are not much. But it’s a start. I’m hoping over Thanksgiving, when our children are here, we will be able to take some time to go through a few things and, with their encouragement, get rid of some things we haven’t done anything with since the 1970s through 1990s.
