In our home there are stacks of books everywhere. This is in spite of the fact that we have a large amount of space set aside for book shelves. Our shelves are more than full and we’re running out of storage space in outbuildings for books. It’s just that we both love to read and we tend to have a number of different projects happening at the same time.

For me, the stacks are remainders of past projects still to be put away, current projects, and upcoming projects.

I spend a lot of time on the couch and so there are book piles associated with the couch. On the blanket chest in front of the couch, besides other books, there is a starter stack of books for a current project:

W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk.
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877.
There are also printouts – issues of the New England Freedmen’s Aid Society’s The Freedmen’s Record, deeds from Beaufort County South Carolina deed books for the sale of land in 1873 where a freedmen’s school was located, and so forth.

On the back of the couch is another stack, different focus:

Will Ousler, editor, As Tough As They Come. (1951 paperback – stories by Hammett, Cain and others. My favorite story is Steve Fisher’s Goodbye Hannah.)
N.K. Sanders, Prehistoric Art in Europe (1985, part of The Pelican History of Art).
Kim Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (In a binder below the stack I have a printouts of Eric Hofstader’s “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt” (1955) and “Pseudo-Conservatism Revisited: A Postscript” (1962). Hofstader’s insightful analysis of what decades later has become current Republican Party policy.)
Bessinger and Smith, A Concordance to Beowulf.
Bonnie Young, A Walk Through the Cloisters (1979 Metropolitan Museum of Art guidebook).

Corner of my desk in another part of the house:

Stephanie Leary, WordPress for Web Designers.
Vera Caspary, Laura (Feminist Press Edition, I also have stashed away somewhere the original 1947 hardcover edition – a great noir film was made based on the novel).
Raymond Chandler, Killer in the Rain.
Raymond Chandler, Trouble Is My Business.
Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot (1939, this is a post-war edition).
Ian Lancashire, Using TACT with Electronic Texts: A Guide to Text-Analysis Computing Tools.
G.C. Macaulay, The English Works of John Gower, volume II (Early English Text Society edition).
Paul Studer and E.G.R. Waters, editors, Historical French Reader, Medieval Period.
Lacey Beck, Polygamy Preferred (1935, 1942 – The Woodford Press 1952 edition).
Theodore H. White, The View from the Fortieth Floor (1960).
Hindley, Langley, and Levy, Old French Dictionary.

And of course, since no stack should be unadorned, there are 2 sets of tie rod ends for the Honda ATV on the stack of books on the corner of the desk. Work to do that is not bookish. On the floor leaning against the end of the desk are two more tall stacks of books. Of course.

This is just a quickie. We have been consumed with caring for my mom the past 18 months. In April I was in our woods and saw some clusters of Cancer Root emerging (I’ll let readers Google that). I had a camera with me so here’s a photo.

So I want to post something and have an idea, even have a title that fits. The post starts out with us walking in the woods in the late fall about 5 years ago. We’re several miles south of our property and following an old road. There’s a large tree leaning over the road and we have to make a choice, walk under or walk around. It looks stable so we go under and about 30 feet further down the road we hear a loud crash and the tree has fallen.

There’s a film I love that I don’t think is available on DVD. It’s Bliss, based on Peter Carey’s first novel. I first saw it in the mid-1980s and it seemed to capture my feelings about where my life was and where I wanted it to be. The main character, at the end of the film, dies when a branch falls out of a tree he planted years before and hits him.

I don’t have time to write this and what I’m really trying to say, and then I get an idea. I’ll use a photo or two I took on that walk years ago. We came upon, deep in the forest, an abandoned vehicle. It looked like a World War II vintage rescue van. But of course I didn’t have time to find the photos on the computer that has them, so that post isn’t getting written.

In lieu of time and a real post, here are two links to give an idea what’s swirling around in our heads at this moment of time (the first link was sent to us by our daughter).

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-disarming-paintings-made-by-guantanamo-detainees

A few weeks ago I asked Kelsey if anyone had ever asked her to marry

I knew there was one and she’d said yes to him, though the marriage lasted only a few years. She thought for a moment and then started listing names of men and women who’d asked. I stopped her when I’d heard enough.

I told her about my two half-assed proposals, describing in detail one. The other was made to a woman I was besotted with, though you’ll notice I kept one foot firmly in reality: “If you asked me to marry you I’d probably say yes.” That woman let my words fly by without much notice. Besides, she was already engaged, though that marriage didn’t last long either.

Kelsey and her daughter came to stay with me for August in 1977. After they left I had a huge hole in my life, so I wrote her and asked her if she wanted to live with me. She wrote back immediately, yes.

We celebrated our fortieth year of being in a committed relationship on Labor Day weekend, opening a bottle and toasting each other and the years we’ve had together.

We lived a thousand miles apart in 1977 and it wasn’t until June 1978 that we were able to be together full time. Since then we’ve lived in three houses, though two were on this property. The daughter now has a family of her own. It’s been a remarkable time, full of adventures. The funny thing is, if I’d proposed marriage to her Kelsey would have said no.

Labor Day weekend was also the anniversary of our first meeting as freshmen at a party during orientation weekend at college. That was a Saturday night in 1969. She wore a yellow mohair sweater and jeans and managed to break straight through the barriers I’d carefully constructed over the previous four years. She told me later she talked to me because I was the guy with the longest hair in the room. I called her the next day to see if she wanted to go to a movie on campus. She said yes and that started our adventures. We were the two on campus who, when it was pouring rain, were out rolling in the grass laughing our heads off. The daughter’s father said we were crazy.

Kelsey’s favorite movie back then was Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment, which she’d seen seven times. She liked crazy, especially when there was good dialogue.

So many things happened to both of us between that meeting in 1969 and her visit in 1977. Most of that time we were in different states or countries. A lot of that time I wasn’t happy though knowing her bust me out of the constant suicidal ideation, my only real companion until I met her.

In June 1978, when I finally arrived and we could be living together full time, she wore a white tank top, long printed skirt, and a huge smile. The daughter was almost 8, standing by her, holding her hand. The house she’d rented had been built in 1854, a carpenter gothic mechanic’s cottage. That was our home for thirteen years. The daughter’s thirtieth high school reunion was this summer. One of her friends saw a picture of me and said I looked the same. It doesn’t feel that way inside.

Inside I feel like a flower is still unfolding, one that started to bloom forty years ago.

They managed to finally pry me off the ridge. I’m back after spending some time in Colorado. A good time, but I sure missed the woods.

That’s shot at Mud Lake outside of Boulder.

When I flew in to Denver the plane banked and looking across the aisle out the window I realized, those aren’t clouds, those are mountains.

The realization can be pleasant. Just mountains in the distance.

We have a friend we have known since she was a child. Her grandfather used to bring her out to our place so she could see the tadpoles in spring. She had already crashed, metaphorically, into one mountain when she was a teenager and then another fell out of the sky and hit her. She found she has a medical condition where tumors grow in the fluid surrounding her brain and spinal cord. She had two successful surgeries, the first at 15 and the next about 5 years later. Because of Obamacare she could be carried on her mother’s insurance and wouldn’t be penalized because of her prior condition.

But she has reasons to worry. She lives in Seattle and it’s tough going it alone. Living almost from one MRI to the next. Trying to save enough to finish college. Not sure at what point in her life she won’t be able to walk or worse. Worried about medical expenses. And how to deal with this.

The most recent surgery this year was not successful. So she’s going again under the knife next week not knowing what will happen.

If we lived in a country that was civilized, had universal health care, the mountain would still be there, but maybe not quite so large.