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jimsjournal

Sorting books -- 10/17/10




Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours (along with several other members of the Friends of the Peace Dale Library) sorting books in the basement of the library
, getting ready for our next book sale coming up on the first Saturday in November. And will probably have to do some more book sorting next Saturday as well -- separating into cook books and gardening books, children's books, young adult books, history, travel, self-help, sports, general non-fiction, paperback fiction, and hardcover fiction (which this time we are arranging alphabetically by author to see if that effort will be repaid by increased sales) -- and then on the day before the sale will have to move everything to the meeting room we use for the sale.

The books have been coming in as donations ever since the last sale (we do two a year) but the volume seems to increase in the weeks just before a sale as the posters we put up around town seem to remind people that they can support the library by donating books to the sale.


Yes, the above photograph was taken in the basement -- the bright windows are because the library is a rambling Victorian building set on a bit of a hill, so at this end of the building the basement is at ground level.

In fact, let me show you the outside of the building. Here is a view of the east side of the building, taken (obviously) from the parking lot. Although the formal entrance is on the front of the building, it is kept closed and everyone uses side entrance from the parking lot.


And in the picture below you can see the west side of the building (in deep shadow) and part of the front. (And here is a Google satellite view.)


And then on Saturday afternoon Jill and I put in a lot of time and effort in the back yard, digging and chopping and weeding. This what I sometimes thing of as the "way back" yard, the area that used to be wooded until I had a number of trees taken down last year (so now it is half wooded and sort of half cleared, separated from the lawn behind our house by a line of bushes and shrubs and some (relatively) small oak trees. I had a garden plot back there this summer and I plan to continue gardening back there, but I also want to plant some fruit trees. The trees are on order and I've wanted to get that area ready for when they arrive.

This is not an easy task as there are a number of tree stumps. (The tree crew ground up the stumps that were on the edge of the lawn area, but they could not get their stump grinder up into the back area.) I have managed -- with a great deal of effort -- to remove some of those stumps and a few others I will just try to live with. The other problem is that there are lots and lots of rocks -- all sizes, ranging from pebbles to fist size rocks to really big rocks to large boulders, souvenirs of the ice ages and the glaciers that once covered New England. (Rhode Island and the coastal areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut and New York's Long Island) are essentially terminal moraine, the soil and rocks and debris left when the glaciers melted. Those picturesque New England stone walls are the results of the endless labor of farmers attempting to rid their fields of those annoying rocks. (Those boulders you may have noticed in pictures of our front yard or along the side of your house were not brought in for decorative effect -- they were already here and may merely have been moved aside by a bulldozer so that the house could be built.)





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