This day went by fast. I saw it go by. Not even enough time to point it out to someone. At least it did not leave a contrail.

I am never able to predict it; that, is the Saturday VCRS book haul. I thought that there would have been a lot of books there – I got a number of phone calls about drop offs – and the Wasilla Friends of the Public Library recently had their monthly sale.

We get what we get and that is that. We ended up with about a fourth of a pallet of books today. This was enough this time around. I’m

Map where Gottstein takes books with their food deliveries

putting a lot of time into reorganizing the upstairs and the downstairs rooms.

The downstairs room – the person in charge was unable to find someone to go through the Democratic archival material, so I asked Bill to give me a hand. There had been an issue about his getting into the main downstairs BLBP room – turns out that he was using his key on an alternate room – the one the alcoholics use. Sigh.

So today both Pete and I pointed him in the right direction, and he gave me an assist moving the Democratic debris from one side of the room to the other, leaving the wall by the cleared space empty.

We were careful not to throw anything away. Later, as I was walking the horses, it occurred to me that we were dealing not with debris but with archival material. History comes and goes, and it takes many forms. There were posters, and fliers, and framed photos, and articles – all espousing the local point of view.

There was also enough in the way of office supplies to run another, additional campaign. This is re-use material. It included campaign buttons (empty on the front) banners, flags, and other whatnot.

There were also many, many chairs, which I put in the adjacent room. If someone (and that room is in use) puts them back in the BLBP space, I will stash them in another area – under the stairs.

Pete taped up Banker boxes for me. This enabled me to further categorize them and get the boxes on the shelves. I didn’t have enough boxes to get it all done. But I did get what I had downstairs categorized.

I am making it a rule to work either up or downstairs, not both. So today was a downstairs day. Upstairs I have a mix of everything – the nonfiction is going downstairs in the next few weeks. The kids’ books are going to stay where they are.

I enjoyed working alone, the quietude gave me time to think some about the project. There is another place for sale down the street – we’ll see. I no longer get my hopes up.

I do wonder how I did it, working in that small library space, out of bins. Things should go better now that I have better access to the books.

The day is now winding down, like an old alarm clock. Tomorrow, I stay home. Imagine that, a day off.

Next: 29. 1/29/23: Ryder Weighs In