collecting titles
enduring satisfaction
the wonderful books

Until moving them became a problem bigger than having them, I had a large personal library.

Never able to get books that were, by themselves, worth something other than their content (I mean autographed or rare books) the books in my library were there to be read.

Still, to read about ‘Unparalleled treasure trove’ of 16th-century texts worth $25m up for auction, I know what the feller, T Kimball Brooker, means when he is quoted saying, “collecting the titles had ‘been an enduring source of satisfaction and enjoyment‘ and that he had ‘mixed feelings‘ about parting with the ‘wonderful books.‘”

There were always be book people.

People who would rather have a book in hand over a book on a device.

At this time and place, I go both ways.

And time and place do not support a larger personal library at this time and I am okay with that.

I have access to more books than I could ever read.

But being in a room filled with books is as much a splendor as almost any view.

I have known many book collectors.

I have known many book collectors who got older and wondered more and more, what would happen to their books.

One friend told me they had donated a lifetime collection of Early American fiction to Grand Valley State Library thinking it would go into their collection, only to be told that friends found books with his bookplate in them at the Friends of the Library sales and it about broke his heart.

I had another friend who had collected a great library on the American West in general and General Custer in particular and the thought of it being broken up when he passed bothered him a great deal.

In his case, I was able to put him touch with the Special Collections at the University of Michigan which is well known for 1) accepting such collections and 2) guaranteeing that the collection will be kept together.

But what I think of most is a story told to me in passing by a Professor I had in college.

By chance we walked out of a building together and out on to the diag in the center of campus in Ann Arbor when some sort of crowd demonstration was going on.

We stopped to watch.

He looked around and pointed how the police had left one path out of the central campus open.

He said he remember that tactic from his days at Harvard in the ’60s.

Give the crowd a way out.

He then remarked, that like today, he had watched an anti war demonstration back when he was student, in the Harvard Square, standing next to his Professor.

I asked what did his Professor say?

My Professor laughed and told how the crowd was screaming and the cops were advancing and tear gas started flying and his Professor, a much older man, turned to him, shrugged and said, “Well, this time my library is insured.”

My Professor said he looked at his Professor and asked what he meant, “This time my library is insured.”

The Professor looked at him and shrugged again and said that when the Russians kicked the Jews out of Russia, he lost his library.

Then when the German’s kicked the Jews of Germany, he lost his library.

But this time, and pointed at the ‘demonstration’ and smiled, the library is insured!

Never took my library, big or small, paper or electronic, for granted after that.

Those books.

Those wonderful books.

They have been an enduring source of satisfaction and enjoyment.

Those wonderful books have.

one of the top three
in Baltic mythology
not most important

In the story, Mystery totem pole appears on coastal path in south-east England, by David Batty (Guardian, Aug. 9, 2023), I was intrigued by the lines:

The 8ft (2.4-metre) wooden pole, erected on the clifftops on the North Downs Way in Kent, between Folkestone and Dover, has particularly provoked interest for its inscription with the name Perkūnas, the Baltic god of thunder.

“Perkūnas is perhaps the best known Baltic god,” he said. “That is his Lithuanian name. He’s the same as the Slavic god Perun. He’s one of the top three or four gods in Baltic mythology but not the most important.

I am not sure what to make of the fact that not only was I NOT familiar with Perkūnas, perhaps the best known Baltic god, I wasn’t even aware there were Baltic gods.

I knew my Norse or Viking Mythology but I admit mostly from being aware of the names days of the week.

That is to say, what I thought I knew about the names of the days of week, until for this essay, I opened up Wikipedia.

I have long admired how, with the much better public relations enjoyed by Greek and Roman mythology, that the poor cousins up north were able to grab off several day of the week names and interject their lineage into daily interactions through out the world.

For some reason, I enjoyed the thought the Thursday, with its roots in the Norse (not Marvel Comics) lore in Thor, was adopted globally.

I mean if you fly to Japan or Kenya or Lithuania on Thursday and you want someone to pick you up at the airport, you want everyone to understand what Thursday means.

And in my mind, when everyone in the world used the word Thursday, the meant that day named for Thor.

According to Wikipedia, this may not be totally accurate.

Around the world, if there are 1,000’s of cultures, there are 1,000’s of ways of saying the 5th day of the week.

Why am I so late to this party?

I thought the days of the week were globally universal.

I also thought the Rosenberg’s weren’t guilty but that’s another story.

If I call up a mythical friend in India and make a mythical date for lunch on Thursday, does my friend translate that as being on गुरुवार or Guruvār?

Or, if I understand the article in Wikipedia, there seems to be a trend that cultures recognized that the 5th day of the week would be named after the head deity in the local mythology.

Thursday then can be named for Jupiter, Zeus, Bṛhaspati, Brahaspathinda or Boraspati?

Still, if you go to the airport, what do the arrival and departure screens say?

BUT I DIGRESS.

I do enjoy stories about folks who, for no reason beyond doing something funny, put up totem poles.

Something to ‘raise the dialog.’

Something to make people think.

Something to get folks out of their groove.

I am reminded of an art class I took years ago at what is now Grand Rapids Community College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

The Professor had a SLIDE SHOW (I’ll explain these magic lantern shows later – but let me say there was a time when COLOR SLIDE SHOW was a point of difference) of the outdoor works of art in Grand Rapids and he put up a picture of the Calder Stabile and asked, ‘What does it mean?’

I was thrilled to raise my hand and answer that Calder named his stabile, La Grande Vitesse, or, The Great Swiftness and it was inspired by the once Grand Rapids in the Grand River and the stabile showing water pouring over rocks.

The class fell in line with me and several other students made statements that echoed my answer, agreed with me or even said, OH THAT’S IT.

I felt smug.

Very smug.

The Professor listened, nodding, and waited for the discussion to die down.

Then he looked at the image on the screen and said, “well ….”

And he looked back at the class, smiled and said, “I think it means whatever you want it to mean.”

And he went to the next slide.

One last on the days of the week.

I am reminded of the an old comic bit where two guys are arguing about what day of the week it is.

The first feller says it was WEDNESDAY!!! The DAY NAMED AFTER the NORSE GOD WODEN!

The second feller says, nahhhhhh … they named Wednesday … after they named Tuesday.