The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Incredible Lightness of Being, Everything that Rises Must Converge; these and all the other good titles have been taken. This doesn’t leave much for the rest of us, much less dispatch/blog writers. Coming up with new, and equally innovative titles is now a real challenge. I like the above title. I might use it someday, as a book title. There’s always room for one more.

Roll over Shakespeare. There may have been several Shakespeares. Or there may have been no Shakespeares. I estimate that it takes three generations before actual histories are distorted. This is because the second generation information is second hand. And third hand information is third hand. (Gosh that last sentence was absolutely brilliant.)

Book delivery

None of the above would have occurred to me if I hadn’t been writing for surprise.

I pause, having no more surprise left in me.

It was another long day. It was not as hectic as yesterday, a day when there were many volunteers and visitors. Today there were fewer – the number was manageable.

The sun shone brightly, and looking out of the window of the former banquet room of the historic Eagle Hotel, I wondered if my remaining years are going to be spent in that room, watching the seasons go by. We moved there last June – in three and a half months we’ll have been in that space a year.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a good space – all involved did an excellent job in turning it into a book depository. But the work is never ending. There are sometimes lulls, but after a very brief respite, more books come in. Yesterday, for example, Pete brought back a dozen-or-so boxes of books from the Mat Su College library. It’s out-of-date material – the librarians are smart. They know their reading audience. I have begun the process of cataloging these books.

And today Robert went to Title Wave and returned with 30 plus boxes, 25 of which are children’s books. Unlike yesterday, when there were many volunteers, today there were only three. So they cleaned and stamped books and I reboxed the fiction and nonfiction (with Robert’s help) and then reboxed all but two of the children’s book boxes.

I have a lot of children’s books. The shelves are full. I am going to put the extra boxes in the back room.

It’s time consuming, taking care of the onsite stuff – this doesn’t leave me much time for the off site or home site work. I have been fretting some lately, and worrying as to whether or not Pete and I both are spreading ourselves too thin. Seeing the seasons go by, I wonder if I’ll regret doing all this work. Most likely not, because I don’t have many years left.

It’s very sobering – to realize I was once 20 and had 60 years left. I just took it for granted, that I had all that time ahead of me.

I must really enjoy my remaining years.

Next: 72. 3/14/24: Drawing a Blank