Weave and spin, weave and spin

[altivo]

Got the threading error corrected, now I have to sley the individual threads into the reed before I can begin weaving. Or should I be working on the cotton spinning presentation? That requires more thought, I think I'll put it off for tonight.

Much of the ice has been left floating in the air as the water drained away under it. All along roads and in fields you can see great sheets of mirror ice cracking and sagging because they can't hold up their own weight much longer. Unfortunately, the roads are doing the same. Apparently this freeze and thaw cycling has been too much for many of the country roads around here. Just a mile or so north of me, on the route I usually take to work, the asphalt pavement is developing huge potholes. Some of them are twenty feet long and three feet wide. It looks as if running water carried away the gravel or sand beneath the paving and it is caving in. Some of these are parallel to the road's direction, while others extend right across from one side to the other. Those are the worst. You don't want to hit one at speed or you'd definitely risk damaging your vehicle or worse. It's necessary to slow right down to 15 or 20 mph. The longitudinal ones can be avoided by hugging the edge of the road or else straddling them, at least at the moment. I expect though that these are going to turn into real holes soon. We saw similar on some other roads in the area last spring. In fact, some of those holes still haven't been patched. They filled them up with gravel, and each time the gravel started to get kicked out, they'd just add more.

Went through a mountain of "donated" books today, and consigned most of them to the trash or the book sale. Why do people think we can use old dictionaries? There were at least a dozen in there. Random volumes of encyclopedias. Reader's Digest "condensed books". Forty year old text books. These things are worthless. We can't even sell them. I just have to throw them away, and they could have saved a lot of time and trouble by doing that themselves instead of hauling them to me so that I'd have to do it. Grrr.

Comments

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Libraries and Goodwill, the universal book disposal system. What blows my mind is seeing ancient computer books on the shelves, things like Windows 3.1 manuals and such. On the other hand, if they're old enough and interesting enough, always good for grey-muzzle geeks like us eh? I've got a copy of PL-1 on 8" disks with manuals if you're ever so inclined.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Worse than Windows 3.1 manuals: Learn The Internet in 24 Hours books. (They invariably direct you to sites that disappeared six months after the book was published.)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yes. I remember back in 1994 and 95 when I was fighting to keep libraries from buying those things. Unfortunately, people still persist in thinking that they can be "computer literate" by memorizing the function keys used in WordPerfect 5.1.

The current battle with the unwashed public seems to be over e-mail. Amazingly few of them understand it. More and more employers are demanding that all job applicants apply online, send resumes via e-mail, and so forth. Many people over 30 or so are having a terrible time with that.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I admit we have ancient computer books on our shelves that should go. While it's valid for some libraries to preserve everything they possibly can, most of us don't have the shelf space to do that. The problem is, most of us also don't have the staff time to go around finding and removing that stuff. It's not just a matter of identifying the material that needs removal or replacement, but it also has to be disentangled from the catalog and records in the correct manner. Better to have stale stuff sitting around than end up with catalog records pointing to items we no longer have available.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Your book trashing reminds me of food pantry things I've done.

My personal sense of charity is food. Its out of the book of James
where James says, "If you say to your brother, 'be warmed and filled'
but do not give those things that are necessary..."

Basically James is saying, if your ushering someone out the door
into the snow in a tee and shorts thats hungry, pat them on
the back while CNN is on cable and the warm house is getting
ready for dinner and you say, "Hey, stay warm dude, you look
thin, you should eat something!" and then shut the door and
shrug...your going to hell.

Okay so we'd have people donate two year out of date tomato
sauce, or potted meat. Or stuff that no one buys anyway.

Most of it went in the trash.

I wondered at that, I still do, how do people think
their "donating" anything if its crap?

Books must be not unlike that. I donate books that might
be older but not dictionaries (if they are REALLY old
you keep them) and not paperbacks unless they are
popular or current. Theres only so many Gone With The
Wind paperbacks a library could want.

I suggest a small poster printout.

"We Accept Donations of Books. If your cleaning out
the basement use Ebay."

XD

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually, we do have a little written policy about book donations that fits on half a sheet of paper. It says that we don't take old encyclopedias, dictionaries, Reader's Digest condensed books, text books, National Geographic or other magazines, or any books that have been wet, moldy, or otherwise damaged.

It fails. Some people just carefully put that stuff in the bottom of the boxes or bags and put other things on top. Others leave their "donations" at the library door overnight while we're closed. Sometimes when we have too much of this junk piled up we post signs saying that we are not accepting donations at present, and suggesting other recipients. Even that doesn't work. They stuff them into the book drop. They leave them at the back door. They carry heavy boxes into the building without asking first, and then refuse to take them away.

Some female staff are not helpful in this respect. Even when we have the "no donations" policy in effect, they will keep accepting them. "I felt sorry for her, she had filled up her whole car trunk with books and had to get rid of them." Or worse yet, "Mr. Miserly called and said he had a whole lot of current books to donate, and I knew he wouldn't bring us trash so I told him to bring them in." Those are the worst. Mr. Miserly pulls up at the back door with a pick up truck loaded with closed boxes. When opened they will contain old paperbacks that have been wet and stuck together, fifty-seven battered hymnbooks from the church that closed down twelve years ago, a pile of tattered bibles, and assorted loose papers and sales catalogs that were out of date even when I was in college. Then the big prize: all his college textbooks from when he studied golf course management back in 1952. The 1949 edition of the US Dept. of Agriculture Yearbook, entitled "Grass." Books about proper handling and use of DDT. Lawn mower maintenance for models of lawnmowers and tractors that even the oldest staff member never heard of.

I could go on, but you get the picture. The smell is indescribable though.

[saythename.livejournal.com]

Mold and wet dog?

I love the part where they put the books
in the book drop.

*facepaws*

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Reader's Digest? XD You could burn them when it gets cold :P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I don't think they burn that well, really, unless you soak them with gasoline or something. Now that would really be a waste.

I thought those Reader's Digest condensed things had been extinct since the 1960s, but I see them here all the time. I can't imagine that any author would be flattered to have the editors of Reader's Digest decide that his/her book was so wordy that people needed an abbreviated version of it. But I suppose royalties are paid out or best selling authors and publishers would never submit to it.

Myself, I'd be happy to have my book selected by just about any book club. But I'd starve before letting Reader's Digest take their hacksaws to it.

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

*snickers* Altivo's Horse Tails, abridged version by Reader's Digest Condensed Books... followed by Weathering Heights and the collected tales of Poe :P total page count: 75 XD

Inspired to recall...

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

It took me a minute to think back, but I can remember that smell. It's a disgusting smell. If you peeled the bark off a diseased & dying tree that was infested with termites or some other decay-based insect & took a big whiff, you the reader might be able to appreciate that stench... now imagine a forest of trees like that, growing inside your room like some perverted take on "Where The Wild Things Are".

How do I know? I lived in a house much like that once. Rotten books, crumbling walls, mushrooms growing out of wet carpets. I lived in such a nightmare once. Down in the dirt. Know what hurts? Being lowered in who you are.... being reduced from a human to what society would call a dog. Looked down on for how you live. So low you consider digging a hole in the floor, just to see how much further you can sink. The bad mojo gets into your soul. Abuse from others turns into self-abuse. When someone tells you "you are worthless" a thousand times, it sinks to the core and changes things.

You have to strip away everything... all the rotten, wet crap. Away the carpet to the damaged tiles, peel them up... then scrape the foundation clean again. Am I mixing my metaphors? Is this like eating paintchips? Sweep it clean. Sweep away the assumptions of what humans do, can do and experience. Imagine what it's like to come walking out of that to something clean. Push it out and see you staring yourself down in a dirty, filthy mirror asking "Who are you? Who are you really? How do you identify yourself? By whose standards?" Now feel the conviction creep back into your being. Feel your fists tighten as your drive returns and anger hovers on the border as you try to focus on the right kind of determination to climb out of the ditch or out fromunder the bridge you slept under last night. The bats were nothing compared to that smell. The limits are long gone, for there is no bottom nor a top. As you begin the long walk, climbing in darkness, coldness, wetness only one thing fills your ears, these words "I've finally had enough."

That was what came flooding back... amazing how a smell is link to memory... *breathing slows* Thanks, Altivo... very cathardic.

Re: Inspired to recall...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's the smell all right. And I didn't even send you a sample. ;p

Re: Inspired to recall...

[gabrielhorse.livejournal.com]

Heh, again I'm greatful ^_^ It's not hard to find that smell in this state anyway...

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I've never seen frost damage to roads before...usually the damage I see are when water under cuts the roadway or when the tar melts in summer.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Imagine the water undercuts, only the water gets frozen solid while its under there, expanding and pushing the roadbed up in humps. Then a thaw comes and the water melts and drains away.

Now let that happen over and over again. That's what happens in a year like this. We call it frost heave, and it can be very destructive. One place that you can often see the effect over many years is in old cemeteries, where the headstones tilt this way and that like bad teeth. The freezing and thawing shifts them a little at a time until after a century or so they are all crazy and every which way.