Today, my "downsizing consultant," Sue Venman, came over and helped me start the arduous task weeding out my core library. I set up a system of numbering each book, photographing it with its number, listing it in a database, then sorting books into four piles: "Keep," "Old/Rare," "Brattleboro Books (BB) and "Experienced Goods (EG) and then boxing up the piles and noting in the database where the book ends up. Old /Rare books will be disposed of in a more careful way with the thought they might have value. BB is a place that buys fairly nice books. So those are books in good condition. EG is the Hospice shop - like taking books to Goodwill. Not fussy. Today we put 175 books through that process. That took about 3 hours. It was faster with two, but I can't afford Sue for the whole job. I can do it alone, but it will be slow. But I can see it happening. Photographing the book is a great idea, I feel. I wish I had done that years ago when I started first disposing of books. It's like keeping your library and giving it away at the same time. My library is so personal. These books are friends going back decades in many instances.
We emptied the top four shelves today. Two shelves to go in this bookcase . Probably at least four or five hours there for me working alone.
This is what lies ahead to do on the other side of my study. Many hours of work.
Earlier last week :
Last Saturday, we went to a Harvest dinner with friends at the Scott Farm orchard, a five - course meal featuring heirloom apples with each course. This is Eliza and Cliff Bergh. The first course was five kinds of apples and three kinds of cheese, bread, and freshly pressed cider. Our table was all friends, but we scarcely knew another soul in the room of 120 people. Evidently a social circle we don't move in .
Last Monday, Seth Harter, the lecturer on Japanese art at Osher, gave a fascinating talk on ceramics. We learned about the Mingei movement, Yanagi Soetsu and the influence of Korean pottery on Japanese ceramics, especially the Kizaemon-Ido tea bowl, among many other things.
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