I am going to keep writing A-Z entries, some will be the same letter of the alphabet. Then, after a decade or two has passed, I will select the best ones and put them together. Sometimes, it takes this long to get some perspective and to see what writing resonates and what writing does not.

Ya gotta give it time. This seems antithetical to nulla dies sine linea, but this is not to say stop writing. This is to say set the writing aside and come back to it when your mind is free of the damnable cobwebs.

Distractions – had plenty of them today. Have not yet gotten to working on Shelf Life: A Book about an Overabundance of Books, but I will. I won’t spend much time on it, but I will maintain my momentum.

Pam and Alys at 2024 MLK event

What a day, good distractions. The daylight is coming back. I cleaned the horse pen as the sun was coming over the horizon. Shortly thereafter, it appeared to be a sunny but cold day. You don’t get one around here without the other.

I drove in with Pete to the historic Eagle Hotel. We arrived at 10:08 a.m. Three volunteers had arrived at 10 a.m. and were just starting to figure out what to do. I gave them their marching orders, secretly being glad that yesterday and the day before that I’d sorted out all the fiction that took the form of a private donation. This donation was from an 80-year-old woman and her husband – lots of fiction, a lifetime of reading, for sure.

I mentioned this to one of the volunteers, who says she has a houseful of stuff, adding that when your time comes you have one of two choices. You can either just leave it behind and someone will take care of it, or you can find someone to take it. When our neighbor Jim died, he left it all behind. There was actually no way on earth that he would have been able to figure out what to do with his stuff, he was way beyond this point. His family was also way beyond this point. Now new people who have no idea what it took on the part of many, many individuals to clean it up, are moved into their new base camp.

The volunteers cleaned a lot of fiction books in a short amount of time. There was a lot of good conversation going on in what I privately refer to as a think tank. There was some talk about the Iowa Caucus, this was before the results were announced. I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was that something bad might have to happen before something good happens.

Around noon, Pete and I went to the Glenn Massey theatre (named after a college administrator who killed himself) and we attended the Martin Luther King festivities. It was déjà vu all over again, much like last year but with more interaction with Alaskan movers and shakers. I had my spiel down before I entered the door. I says that we were able to provide a lot of good books because we have storage space for them. Then I added that we need more space, which is why we’re working on getting a new building.

A day full of distractions, indeed.

Next: 16. 1/16/24: Nulla Dies Sine Linea: What Now?