Late summer and the fourth wave of Covid is ruling our lives. Britten's son Wren (last seen when I held him as a cranky baby) was at music camp at Berkeley and she came up for one night. The first time I've seen someone I'm related to in years. Much family history talk. Ingrid put me onto this book on archaeogenetics and history by DNA analysis of ancient humans and microbes showing how migrations and pandemics shaped human history.

Just as I had spent awake hours in the night thinking about what my next step would be in getting the TIF funds from the town, the check hit the mailbox. That money and the $5K grant from the BSB foundation are enough to get the Business & Technology Room going. It doesn't matter how well things are going; I just switch my worry to the next thing. To me we are in a countdown to be able to open just after Thanksgiving. Now I'm obsessing about a circulation desk.

Last night I dreamed that the church had turned the thrift store into an upscale vintage store combined with a sanctuary. They had made the main room smaller by moving the wall between it and the kitchen area. They couldn't believe that I had not realized the wall was mobile. (Tell me it's not significant when you don't know a wall is movable). There were youth choirs singing when I stepped back out onto the street.

I remember the shock on people's faces when, after setting up the double wide shelves in the main room, I suggested that we vertically slice the remaining end panels and use them as wall bookshelves. Last week, Bahoosh did the cuts in such a way that we could still use the braces, and voila, matching wall shelves. Next he will use the other halves of the cuts and create wooden brace/spacer for more wall shelves using the the same adjustable shelves. We are getting amazing mileage out of the load of free shelving.

This is the last week of my managing the thrift store. I suggested several ways that the shop could go on; the elders will probably just rent the space. The library takes all my time and it seems pointless to financially support a moribund organization. Looking forward freeing up Fridays and Saturdays. I need to spend most of my time on the capital campaign. This brochure is ready to be printed up and the emails and conversations will begin. The selectmen #PT&D continue to make is almost impossible to access the TIF funds that were approved at town meeting. I had hoped the state would agree to do our TIF expenditure approvals, but they are smart enough not to get entangled with mean-spirited and vindictive small town governments. In the meantime we catalog and shelve and the library feels like a sanctuary. The two AirBnB suites above the library are performing way beyond expectations with 75% occupancy for July. Except for things like weddings in the future, people only book about two weeks out. Most of our bookings are for one night stays, often Boston to Acadia with us as the stopover. The rooms get excellent reviews.

I was cataloging nonfiction and happened upon this book which I had to read and which felt like exactly the book I needed at this moment.

“This was what Darwin was trying so hard to get his readers to see: that there is never just one way of ranking nature's organisms. To get stuck on a single hierarchy is to miss the bigger picture, the messy truth of nature, the "whole machinery of life." The work of good science is to try and peer beyond the "convenient" lines we draw over nature. To peer beyond intuition where something wilder lives. To know that in every organism at which you gaze, there is complexity you will never comprehend.”