Your mate has a bum leg, so you opted to go to the local recycling center in his place, and salvage books. It wasn’t what you were wanting to do – you were wanting to take care of things on the home front. However, salvaging books is your favorite book project activity, so you went willingly, after doing your morning farm chores and eating breakfast.

Every time you go there, things are different. The number of boxes of books varies, as does the layout of the salvaging area. One thing is a constant, and that is that your buddy Bill, who co-founded the Bright Lights Book Project, was there, already hard at work.

You asked what needed doing and he pointed to a pallet that held at most, twenty boxes of books. There were two other pallets with more books on them; these were, as the handwritten signs on the topmost boxes indicated, to be sorted by a VCRS volunteer for the VCRS bookstore.

Bill

You began salvaging, keeping an eye out for what you now most need, kids’ and Christmas books. The kids’ books are going to designated villages and the Christmas books are going (maybe) to the Anchorage Performing Arts Center, where they will be passed out on rehearsal day, to nonprofit attendees. You, who have been stockpiling Christmas books, are already looking forward to this event, to a large part because you have some really nice books to pass out. You favorite is a children’s book entitled Mittens; it’s a Ukrainian folk tale, with incredible artwork.

You and Bill work very well together and are very efficient. You finished up before noon and were then on your separate ways elsewhere. You headed for the Meeting House, where you categorized 250 children’s books. They’ll be cleaned and stamped this week. You also sorted through your Alaskana section and added a good number of books to the Christmas mix. And you put aside the sled dog books for the upcoming Iditarod.

After, you distributed books to three local businesses. You put four boxes of books in your car, and when you were done, had none on hand. You considered going back for more kids’ books because you didn’t have enough for the shelves in two places, but then decided against it for it was getting late.

You felt good about your efforts – so much so that you gave yourself a pat on the back for having developed an organizational scheme that, as far as this project goes, works. Actually, the organizational scheme evolved over time, beginning when you and a local business owner agreed to have bookcases in two of her businesses.

Key to this is the fact that the Meeting House is the hub. You don’t have to go far in order to distribute. In fact, there are two routes – Bill does one and you do the other.

In the evening you went to a local pizza joint and passed on a copy of Lapham’s Quarterly to your friend Timothy. It is an anthology; the subject is music.

Tomorrow is going to be a much-deserved day off.

Next: 284. 10/6/22: Sunday, all Day