The Roseledge Books Blog

The new seasons of “NCIS” and “Castle” have started and my “redo” knitting is at hand.  The treetops are dabbed with yellow-turning -gold, except for one truly orange and stunning exception.  The reds, probably either newer or shorter maples, are part of the street-level action. It must be fall and  I am back in Minnesota with television and a glorious, sky-filled 12th floor view.

Sneer if you will at my television choices, but “Castle‘s” combination of a writer’s mind coupled with the police’s  legally-acceptable-evidence gathering is the way I wished the world knew things.  If  more people added outside the box options to inside the box rules,  we might have fewer stalemates, misdiagnoses, and boring people — among other things.The world needs people with options which can come from books and the more the better, this bookseller says.

Weathered granite or skin of a rhino or sailors who smoke? Options.

In a quote from one of the many recent articles about her, Alice Munro (Dear Life; Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You), Canada’s and the world’s latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, linked curiosity with happiness.  She’s right, of course, but I think the happiness comes when the curious person sees the unusual, asks why, how or if, and comes up with options.  So it all boils down to options.  The more options, the more hope; the more hope the more happiness and probably a keener sense of humor, too.  Now that’s good living.  But I digress.

I’ve read two of the paperback books about Nikki Heat as “authored” by Richard Castle (Frozen Heat; Naked Heat).  I’m sure I saw the most recent Nikki Heat book (Deadly Heat) on the NYTBR‘s Bestseller List for at least ten minutes, but when I checked again, it was gone. The books are okay, but not nearly as much fun as the show.  Television offers the nuance of many pictures worth 1000 words each, especially with a seasoned acting group used to each other by now.  Fun to speculate about who actually writes the books, though.

Back to “NCIS“. I will miss Ziva David.  She and Daniel Silva’s mysteries (e.g. The Confessor, The Prince of Fire and, because his latest always seems best, The English Girl) are my only continuing connections to Israeli-U.S. continuing entanglements.  As strong women characters go, I like Ziva much better than Lizbeth Salander in Stieg Larsson’s  Millenium Trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, Girl Who Played with Fire, Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest).

Best porch food ever? With opinions, friends and good white wine, surely yes.

But I digress still or again.  I started this post intending to argue for the worth of a murderless mystery book club and I continue to intend to do that, just not here or now.  Instead my redo knitting project calls, as my friend who knits and who puts and re-puts together my best efforts is coming to lunch and I have my redone sweater, shorter by four inches and with re-patterned sleeves to give to her.  This is tricky because she didn’t like all the hanging strands of the sweater’s several colors much to begin with and they are only a few fewer now.  I blame it all on working without a pattern,  using for the first time, all-cotton yarn which I wrongly thought would not “give,” on slippery needles that kept slipping.  And as usual, I included just enough green color to evoke a comment from a green-hater.  Isn’t friendship grand?

A million days ago, or so it seems, I and my coffee were in Maine on the porch, overlooking  kayakers and dinghy rowers cut the often still water of the morning harbor,  and wondering why lobster boats and sailing boats couldn’t share the moorings I could see.  That was then.

The days of before when the mix of boats in the harbor was fairer.

Today from my Minnesota aerie (12th floor window),  I read the paper, enjoy my coffee and the big sky hovering over trees of very slowly turning colors, listen to the city sounds of sirens and traffic, and imagine the humphs and comments of fellow readers (that is you) when an interesting item appears.

**********

I loved Aaron Hirsch’s op ed piece about learning, especially in an online environment, probably because I agree with him AND it gives Roseledge Books the standing it deserves as a field resource for the forever curious who sail in and visit RB each summer to look for books and wi-fi options.

Subject matter in online courses, he notes, is chosen, presented, and evaluated by the teacher.  Students have little say.  Field work, on the other hand, allows students to challenge the teacher’s claims against evidence outside the teacher’s domains of classroom or computer.  So Professor Hirsch argues for “hybrid online-field courses”   in which the teacher chooses the online portion which then prepares the students to challenge the teacher’s claims in a museum, a nature reserve, a city neighborhood or, I would add, a bookstore. And isn’t that a good idea!

You don’t have to be a librarian (or Irish?) to love the idea of challenging ideas based on strong — if hugely varied — evidence, but maybe it helps.  And won’t we all be better off when it happens more often!  Know that Roseledge Books will have Aaron Hirsch’s new book, Telling Our Way to the Sea:  Voyage of Discovery in the Sea`of Cortez, as soon as it is out in paperback.  Until then, if Professor Hirsch and his students are ever sailing nearby, the Roseledge Books welcome mat is ready with lots of lawn chairs and arguable books.

***********

Anytime I see “obsessive quest” I am on it, especially if a book results or if the searcher is branching out into less familiar terrain.  Professor Gregg Hecimovich, whose specialty is Victorian literature, intends to publish “The life and Times of Hannah Crafts,” (a slave’s novel) so both qualifications will be met, and Roseledge Books will have the forthcoming book, as soon as it s available in paperback.

Is Sea Street worthy because it leads somewhere or just because it is?

The only other “obsessive quest” book that comes to mind is Roger Mitchell’s Clear Pond:A Reconstruction of a Life. A snotty NYT Book Review thought his effort unworthy, as I recall, because the subject was a man whose name was in or on so few records.  Well humph,  I say.  I immediately bought the book in hard copy and loved poet Mitchell’s five-year search for whatever he could find about Israel Johnson.  If ever the book is issued in paperback, RB will have it in a heartbeat.

***********

Oh no!  It’s the messy desk vs. the tidy desk question AGAIN.  I once used Harold Geneen’s point that a big glass-topped desk with one piece of paper on it indicated a person capable of only one thought at a time. (I think he was CEO of ITT then.)  I used his perspective many times when program accrediters, especially nursing accrediters, came to my University office and frowned at my idea-filled desktop of assorted piles.  This new research, which apparently surprised the researchers,  refers more politely to the tidy desk keeper as “conscientious”, “organized”, “disciplined”, but I remain messy, unrepentent. and in their words, creative.  I can only hope.

Time to get on with the day (83 degrees, very windy).  Now if I could just find on my desk where I put Martin Walker’s Bruno: Chief of Police, a new mystery which might be my Roseledge Books series find for next summer.

The heron waded at the edge of sand and water for more than twenty minutes, than delicately stepped in between the pilings of Dave’s wharf and disappeared from sight.  (The webcam might have captured the scene about 8 a.m. EDT.)  The bald eagle soared, chased by the squawking gull whose lobster-boat droppings were in the eagle’s talons, surely a quintessential Americanism.  The plumped robin perched atop the blueberry bush (immediately outside the webcam window) and snacked on all the blueberries within reach.  Thus it is that the robin is heart-healthy and an occasional webcam star.  Sunny, dry, a bit of a breeze and a hint of fall all conspired to make the cup of coffee taste even better.

Lobster boats, sail boats, and Roseledge Books as harbor backdrop. Perfect.

Scott brought the latest box of new books from the post office (RB is too close for home delivery).  It held two recommended, lesser-known mystery series for Roseledge Books to start carrying.  You may recall my marketing ploy of getting you hooked on a mystery series not often carried by other bookstores, thus luring you to return each summer for the series’ latest installment.  Mixed results so far.  Two Roseledge Books Regulars couldn’t wait and read the whole series in the winter.  One other admitted to reading the latest installment in hard cover, instead of waiting for the paperback which is all RB carries.  My find for this summer was Elly Griffiths’ series set on the marshy coast (the fen country?) of England and featuring forensic archaeologist and academic, Ruth Galloway. These latest possibilities look equally promising for next year.

The first possibility is Julia Keller’s A Killing in the Hills, a murder mystery set in West Virginia (from which she comes) and recommended by Anna Quindlan as one among several good books she’s reading which were written by women journalists.  I also like that she writes about a place she knows well because I often read books for their sense of place.  The second possibility is Australian Peter Temple’s Bad Debts, which introduces Jack Irish, “a some-time lawyer, a part-time debt collector, and occasional private eye” ( also interested in turf, football, and cabinet making, says a readerly friend who recommended him).  I haven’t found an Australian detective as memorable as Arthur Upfield’s Bony (Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte series) whom I last read a very long time ago, so I am hopeful.  Then last night what did I hear on NPR’s Fresh Air but critic John Powers describing and liking Jack Irish (” he’s smart, funny”), so I am encouraged.  I’ll keep you posted.

A bookseller’s task is never done.  And isn’t that a good thing.

The last minutes of sunlight and the boats seem to gleam. The day is done.

The summer is winding down.  Fewer boats sailing in, fewer Sea Street walkers, runners, struggling bicyclists or parents carrying wiped-out kids on shoulders, more leaves falling, but that may be due to poplar and/or maple blight caused by our soggy, foggy summer.  The sun-glo (sweet, orange) grape tomatoes are ripening at a perfect pace for one appreciator.  Scott just called.  He is on his way down (from Wiley’s Corner) because he needs one-dollar-bills for his garage sale tomorrow.  This may be my only sale of the day.

Time to settle in with a 20th anniversary edition of Peter Lovesey’s The Last Detective. the First Inspector Peter Diamond Book.  I had forgotten how much I liked him.  The Jane Austen in Bath tirade alone is worth the price of  the book.  The last of my blueberries and wonderful homemade ice cream (a gift; thank you, thank you) are a perfect treat and if hunger for goodies persists, I have at hand a bag of frozen gummi bears.  Charlie likens these to frozen lumps of rubber, but what does he know?  If they tasted better, I would be tempted to eat more.

As good as these treats are, all would be better if you were here.

You have a lot of books, some of which you haven’t read and may never read, but you want to buy more.  Oh boy!  Roseledge Books wants YOU.

Your books are starting to take over your living space, a neighbor whispered, “Hoarder,”  and you just spotted Edmund deWaal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes, the perfect book to read before your business trip to Vienna next month.  Good news!  Roseledge Books has The Hare with Amber Eyes just waiting for you.

So many books; so little time (and space); what to do?

Like books, lobster buoys need organizing, too. See a pattern here?

For starters, stop fretting and start arranging.  A few tips from those who know:

Lee Child (think Jack Reacher) needs no order to his 3500 books, as he has a photographic memory and can always find what he needs.  And his book cupboards have hideaway doors.

But some of the rest of us do not have photographic memories and live lives with uncloseted books in the open for all the world to see.  In The Writer’s Desk, Jill Krementz photographed writers work spaces and noted in words and pictures that one thing they all had in common was overloaded open book shelves.  This in-your-face arrangement just begs for a magnifying glass to see what titles looked most handy and used.  (Nicholson Baker (writing in The New Yorker maybe 20 years ago) used this technique to identify titles of books used in a variety of advertising layouts, e.g. on a bedside table or on a hassock or the living room floor.  I can’t remember why he did it, but I liked the idea. )

My thesis advisor (at the top of her game) was sent copies of books in her field (it was a few years ago), many of which she had already read in pre-publication format, so she just added them to the end of the last shelf she was filling and thereby indirectly had a scanable array of current thinking in the field.

The pile is smaller but more diverse. Multi-media alert?

A bookstore I recall (but not by name) arranged all books, and later videos, by place, so people who were  preparing to travel or just geographically curious could choose novels, biographies, memoirs, mysteries, or histories by setting.  I loved browsing through their catalog.

In Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman includes a charming essay on the merger, and then arrangement, of collections when she and her husband first decided to live together.

When social and political activist Meridel LeSueur died, her friends worked to save her library and tried to arrange the books as she had arranged them.  What a great way to profile an active mind, especially if the order changed over time!

So if you are convinced arrangement matters and might be fun to try, Roseledge Books suggests the following:

Put your books in piles and start choosing which to box and which to shelve.  Don’t discard any yet. Set aside those you linger over longest.  Put these on a nearby shelf so you can amend the “collection” as time goes by and new books enter..

You are well on your way to building an ideal bookshelf,  in the style of the 150 noteworthy people who did so in My Ideal Bookshelf by Thessaly LaForce and Jane Mount. Your shelf of books becomes a kind of statement of who you are or are becoming and, to a limited extent, how you got that way.  I think a listing of these books (pictures, recordings, etc.) with comments if you choose, would make a great obituary.

At least think about it.

Shades of one color plus handsome contrast suggests a subtle shelf life.

Wow!  How good can good be?  Take a look below and know that with people reading, then knowing about all of this, the world stands a chance.  These are some of the books readers chose the past several days:

Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan
City of Dreams by William Martin
Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
Day of the Barbarians by Alessandro Barbaro
Farm Work: Jamie Wyeth Exhibition Catalog
Genesis Code by John Case

Why does someone choose this book, but not that one?  Ah, the mystery and the fun.  And if Roseledge Books rarely has a specific book someone is looking for, few who stop leave without finding at least one treasure.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund deWaal
Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin

Hard to tell from the titles how many books are about coastal lore.

Lincoln Letter by William Martin
Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell
Maine’s Favorite Birds by Jeffrey Wells, Alison Childs
Mission to Paris by Alan Furst
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

Six titles have a direct tie to Maine, maybe a seventh (M. is reading it now to find out), and I think an eighth ties to Tenants Harbor through a summer person.  Please recall that any book is right for RB shelves if it has a tie to TH (or Maine).  The old rule of thumb argued for up to six degrees of separation to find the tie, but, as I recall,  a more recent figure argues for 4.17 steps to shelfdom because everyone and everything is more connected now.

Old Books Rare Friends by Madeline Stern and Leona Rostenberg
Otherwise by Farley Mowat
Places in Between by Rory Stewart
Q’s Legacy by Helene Hanff
Rag and Bone by Peter Manseau
Thread Across the Ocean by John Steele Gordon `
Trinity Six by Charles Cumming
Trunk Music by Michael Connelly
Water: A Natural History by Alice Outwater

Obscure patterns lurk within rock and among Roseledge Books and readers.

If people typically look at ten books for each one they choose (a very old University of Chicago study), just think of all the fun you are missing by not being here to browse through Roseledge Books’ unusual gatherings of books and people.

There is still time.

It is August 3 or 4 or 5 and the heater kicked on. AARGH!  But, as always in Maine, wait fifteen minutes or, in this case two hours, and folks walking by have shed their hoodies.

If you are a webcammer, you may have noticed the Tonka Toy-like equipment with the big claw hovering by the side of the road and trucks unloading handsome granite from (local) Long Cove quarry. Roseledge Books is getting a terrific new stone wall.  The wall builders are putting together a jigsaw puzzle of stone amid Sea Street passers-by, all of whom have an opinion.  “It perks your place right up,”  a Barter’s Point neighbor stopped by to say.  This sounds like my late neighbor Harry’s comment, “It’s about time” when I finally painted Roseledge.

The undone stone wall turns the corner and continues this long time gem.

The high bush blueberries right outside the front window are bluing, but the Produce Lady has had the native blueberries (low bush, small and perfect) for several weeks.  Yum.  The rose hips are turning red-orange faster than seems normal.  T he little orange tomatoes are still just flowers on the tall, but skinny, tomato plants.  And the herbs are losing the too-wet fight.

I wish the harbor were busier with moorings, but my judgement is clouded by the lobster boats that routinely tie up at Cod End moorings (in front of the webcam) where sailboats used to dwell.  The sailboats may be tied up at the Tenants Harbor Boat Yard moorings (behind the trees to the left of the webcam view); if so I expect these sailors to walk by soon.

Two new books of note:

Maine’s Beautiful Birds with knowing notes by Jeffrey Welles and Alison Childs and art-worthy painting by Evan Barbour. This is a slim volume, long awaited by local or visiting birders who are tired of hauling heavy, all-inclusive bird guides, e.g. Sibley, Peterson, and at $15.00, it is also a great thank-you gift for a great Maine experience.

Coaster Days by Roy Meservey. As you row, paddle, sail, motor or otherwise enter the harbor, look around at the lobster wharves, the East Wind Inn, and a whole lot of cottages/homes and see instead  the boat-building era of Tenants Harbor, e.g. sail lofts, railway, launch site, and graveyard, as recalled by Roy Meservey (who also built and lived in Roseledge) and which still exists in the Tenants Harbor Boat Yard.   Great photos, too.  Full disclosure: (Mostly) Charlie, Pam, Scott and (somewhat) I had a good time digitally transcribing the 1976 original.  We left the typos and added one of our own.  Can you find it?

Roy doesn't mention tides, but the resulting mudflats are noteworthy.

It is raining,… again.  This would make it a great day to curl up with a RB book, if readers knew two days ago that two inside days were coming.  (I am reading my third Ruth Galloway mystery.) Wimpy sales suggest that experienced summer people knew to be outdoors from dawn to dusk enjoying the two, rare, sunny, dry days.  I am counting on severe cabin-fever to set in about 4 p.m. this afternoon and am ready for the dripping wet-weather gear that will be part of any visit.

The weather gods assure me, I am sure, that Saturday travelers — especially from points south — can expect the real glory days of summer from Sunday on.  See you all soon.

This was the week when special people bought Roseledge Books’ special finds, so RB has the first bestsellers (3 copies sold) of the summer:

Farm Work, a catalog of Jamie Wyeth’s art includes an interview rewritten as if Jamie Wyeth were talking directly to the reader.  It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to an anecdotal biography, much like Richard Meryman’s Andrew Wyeth.

Ray Bradbury’s Green Shadows, White Whale: A Novel of Ray Bradbury’s Adventures Making Moby Dick with John Huston in Ireland has it all for with-it sailors who love movies, Ireland, books and beer and who could never manage to get through the original Moby Dick between fogs.

What makes Maine a best seller? Boats and the sea and a memory. Sigh.

One shrewd browser found Lost Bar Harbor by G.W. Helfrich and Gladys O’Neill and knew its pictures would be useful for a biography he was writing about someone not usually linked to Bar Harbor

Two shrewd browsers bought James McCracken’s Innocents at Sea and Charles and Carol McLane’s Muscongus Bay and Monhegan Island as gifts for people who knew the authors or who live in a place included in the book.

Do you like rock walls? Roseledge Books may have another when you get here.

I’m still looking for new mystery series to ensnare the unwary into coming back year after year to get the latest paperback.  Three earlier finds — Julia Spencer-Fleming, Harry Dolan, and Bruce DaSilva — do not have new paperback editions out this summer, so I’m looking still or again.  Elly Griffiths is a possible, and I’m reading Sara Gran’s Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, which I like but know is not for everyone.  A clue: Claire DeWitt is likened to Lisbeth Salander. Suggestions and readers needed.

Business is mostly slow.  More boats in the harbor these days, but still not many compared to summers past.  And the weather!  Take your pick: foggy and soggy or way too hot.  The knees like neither.

Can you see the ripening blueberries on the webcam?  And did you see the eight male goldfinches frolicking in the easily-moved leaves of the rogue poplar?  We checked this morning and Charlie’s forercast beneath the webcam is substantially more cheerful than weather.com, and so far he’s right, although the clouds are thickening.

It’s nearly August.  Hurry up.

A blue heron stood between the wharf and the wrecks at mid-tide in front of Roseledge.  It was visible through the webcam if you looked at the right time.

The little kids sailed this way and that in the St. George Sailing School daysailers.

Two light blue sailboats were moored in the harbor at the same time, though one of them might have been gray and, like the water, changed color when the clouds hovered.

Things beautiful and wonderful grace Tenants Harbor in summertime.

Elly Griffiths, a new-to-me writer, sets her mysteries in a to-die-for place on the salt-marshed coast of Norfolk  and peoples them with appealing characters and plots. I’ve read and liked a lot two so far: Crossing Places and The Janus Stone. A RB Regular pointed out that Dorothy Sayers’ set her wonderful The Nine Tailors in the same memorable fen country.

Two neckless hawks with serrated wing edges flew over the porch this morning as we enjoyed a cup of coffee before nine a.m., after which the sun was too high and hot to be outdoors

Native blueberries are in. Yes, the perfect little wild blueberries that are so good and so good for you.  But don’t hurry to the Harborside Market;  we got the last two quarts on this first day the Produce Lady had them.  Summer joy alert.

Join the sailors' excitement at sighting Roseledge Books. Good reads await.

I’m still trying to learn more about the Middle East from those who have spent time there and traveled.  I loved Rory Stewart’s Places in Between which tells of his walk across Afghanistan in winter.  I’ve listened to the news differently ever since.  And I loved William Dalrymple’s mid-’90’s book, From the Holy Mountain, in which he walked the eastern Mediterranean coast to update a 598 A.D. survey of  monasteries  from Mt. Athos in Greece to Coptic Egypt.  It was timely and hugely informative, especially his conclusion that he was unexpectedly witnessing the twilight of Eastern Christianity.   So I thought I would love William Dalrymple’s mid-’80’s book, In Xanadu in which he shadows  Marco Polo on his 13th C. travels from Jerusalem to Xanadu in China. I am reading it and learning a lot which I like,  but it’s hard to read about his Syria of then and not think about the past two years of bloodshed and destruction in the Syria of now.

Maybe it’s time to shift to Farley Mowat’s Otherwise, a memoir of his early years that “shaped his life as a writer and activist” and, I hope, as a sailor and person with a sense of humor.  RB copies should be at the post office tomorrow.

Cooling off tomorrow night and, apparently, forever thereafter.  See you soon.

People who read know more than people who don’t, they are more interesting because they think outside themselves, and they are more useful because they are more likely to be ready for whatever is next.

Sometimes enjoying the (perfect) moment tops preparing for the next.

Consider the following:  I no more than finished Edmund deWaal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes and lived with the author’s family through the Holocaust years of looting, forced sales, and stingy restitution of their extensive family artworks than I read about the continuing reluctance of museums to face questions of  Nazi life and subsequent provenance.

And B.  A. Shapiro’s mystery The Art Forger feeds into recent news of the unsolved 1990 heist of art works from the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum without diminishing the possibility of the fictional activity in this book.  The discussions about copying and forgery deserve a read, too.  Also regarding this famous art theft,  Whitey Bulger’s trial has not diminished the possible accuracy of David Hosp’s explanation in his mystery, Among Thieves.

Nora Roberts’ Chasing Fire was a useful introduction to “Hot Shots”, the specially trained firefighters, nineteen of whom were killed in an Arizona wildfire last weekend.

These are just the most recent and, maybe, the most particular examples I could think of.  An acquaintance asked why I read about things that had not happened to me or that I didn’t know much about.  I read to be ready for whatever is next, I said thinking about it.  Now, if I only knew what was next, this would really work.  The books of Roseledge Books are my ongoing, best faith effort to help you and me be ready.   The world needs us.

The fog rolls in, the fog rolls out, the fog rolls in again and again

Notes to commenters:

Carol, what book did your daughter so long ago choose?  I wonder if RB still has it.  The underlying question is: are there books RB should try always to have?  And find out if Bev, who has also been to RB and understands its spirit, has titles to suggest.

M from NC: Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life by Christina Marsden Gillis sounds wonderful, especially with its ties to Ruth Moore, but it is not available in paperback; and if ever there was a summer when hardcover mildew would set in on the way home from the post office, this is it.  RB does try to have Ruth Moore’s Spoonhandle always available, but maybe more titles would be even better.

And just in case the Scrabblers return to Roseledge, which I hope you do, I have been reading to get ready for word challenges.  And I now have evidence to support my continuing assertion that a word does not have to be in a dictionary to be a word.

Out, out damn fog.

Hot! Hot! Too hot to walk the shadeless portion of Sea Street in front of Roseledge Books and be tempted to stop in.  But the other day was glorious and the first busy day in the bookstore.

Two groups were repeaters, one of which was a group of one who was a great browser.  One was a group of three who bicycled by and, even if their intent was mostly to catch their breath, they bought great books and vowed to be back.  But the fourth group were newbies who stopped in on the clearly compelling advice of a sailing colleague.  Thank you, thank you, whoever you are (they weren’t sure).  Word-of-mouth or word-of-t-shirt is my favorite lure.  And they chose some of RB’s most special books.

Edward Hopper-like chairs await you with books for an afternoon read.

For instance, they considered Maine Scenes and Seasons  by Richard Procopio has great photos and text to introduce people from away to the glory that is Maine;

One of each Farley Mowat book on the shelf which on that day were Bay of Spirit and The Serpent’s Coil;

Farm Work, my favorite Jamie Wyeth book/exhibition catalog which has within it his answers to interview questions arranged more like an informal monologue about his work;

Lambs of God by Marele Day, a snotty Vatican novel (always a plus), set on an island in the Hebrides (the watery terrain is almost a cousin), with unusual knitters (an emerging plus); and

The Life and Traditions of the Red Man is Joseph Nicolar’s 19th Century telling of Penobscot tribal ways, unusual and pertinent to those of us living on Penobscot Bay.  Some years ago, RB carried and sold anthropologist Frank Speck’s Penobscot Man, also unusual, pertinent,  published by U of Maine Press and, therefore, expensive.

A hodge-podge of chairs for readers who visit and watch the harbor's ways.

Today a little cooler, but still no breeze, some bugs and intermittent rain.

I am hopeful, but not foolish.