"Trees Pressed Thin"

One of my favorite blogs is written by a lady in North Port who owns a book store. ( booksinnorthport.blogspot.com/ In the discussion, within this blog last winter, she

quoted an author about other outcomes for books. It rolled around my brain

this whole time, but I couldn't reprint it because I didn't know the authors name. Well..

I finally found it after about a four hour search! Never have been that good at the search

portion of research. I hope you enjoy it. “Growth Rings,” by Benjamin Busch.

"Reflections on parents and their books and writings, along with the author’s time spent in the woods, along a stream, as well as his sense of books as “trees pressed thin,” his love for books as objects, cast a spell over me as I read.

The writer will die, the reader will die, and the mice will come for the papers they left in boxes. We will all be covered with a blank white sheet. But there will be a shelf somewhere where the book will survive. Someone will walk into the empty room, blow the gathered dust from it, sit, and begin reading in the light of a window. The book will change what they see outside. Then the reader will consider the placement of the book and the book will remain, again, where it is placed."

Woodward Avenue

Last week, I boiled a big pot of potatoes and bought a Glen's whole cooked chicken. In a smug little way, I believed I was on the top of the food pyramid for the whole next week, nutrition wise. After a week, I advanced a similar notion that doing dishes was wise. So I commenced to clean out the refrigerator, but the stash in the icebox had crashed, and with it my complacency. The dish of potatoes was half full of water and the bowl of chicken contained only skin. Another food mystery had developed in my life. No time to resolve these questions as there is food at Ted's and the opportunity to drive on Woodward Avenue.

Operating Systems

"Burn the ships," I exclaimed, echoing the Norman invaders of England, when I disconnected my internet last month. How was I to know entropy had me by the throat in my audio, video, internet hobby?

My disk drives were breaking down, and to replace them would be very expensive. This along with the knowledge that these would be new components integrated into an ancient system.

The sum of the parts added up to more than the whole. Economy of measure was leading me to a door that I did not want to open. The only handle on this situation was changing my bias of long standing, taking a sling shot ride on the learning curve, and keeping my mind open.

As a thirty year Mac enthusiast, I write this next line as though it were a whisper. To burn light scribe cd labels and collect music videos, I have added system seven to the tool kit. Foolish and effective are two additional feelings for this new method of operation.

Flashback

On the farm, in the attic, was a trunk filled with memories. As kids, we would search through it to find costumes for Halloween. Some fantastic treasures laid buried there. One item, which I never paid much attention too, was a three inch by eight inch, hard cover ledger.

This last, non-camping weekend, I picked the ledger up from my sister Shannon, and got the opportunity to look through it. The first entry was Port Sanilac, Michigan, 1869.

In that year, William T. Quinlan paid a daily rate of $2.50 for two men and a horse. Inflation has kicked the rates up a bit, but perhaps "Two Men and a Truck" have roots in the past.