While cruising around downeast and staying in an airbnb cottage, we were constantly taking reservations for our two airbnb suites above the library. People are moving about the country again. It started with a plan to visit the library in Steuben, and grew into two nights in Columbia Falls, with visits to Jasper Beach and Sandy River Beach, Roque Bluffs, Beals and Wass, Helen's for lobster rolls and haddock. Jasper Beach is a pebble beach and people go there to hear the pebbles roll in and out with the waves like a giant rain stick. Downeast is quiet and the beaches are almost empty. It's a good getaway during tourist season. We have gone up this way several times on the way to Canada but not paid attention to any of the byways that involve getting off of route 1. Real life happens on the peninsulas and the beaches are at the end. Roaming downeast while reading Gigi Georges' Downeast, opened my eyes to things I would not have noticed. Several towns, especially Milbridge, look physically like larger towns, but if you look up their populations, they have shrunk over the years. Beals, Jonesport, and Jonesboro are beaten down with just a few fishing boats with no stores or restaurants. Being on the move, we missed the zoom presentation by Gigi and John Zavodny on Tuesday evening. You can watch it here. Thanks to our friend Marge in Southwest Harbor, Gigi would like to read from her book at our library in August. Ellen from Children's Book Cellar in Waterville has agreed to sell books at the event. We just have to figure out how to have a reading in a not-yet-open library. Speaking of Zavodny (formerly at Unity College), one of his boat captains at Seacoast Mission was in the Steuben library while we had a conversation with the librarian about plastic vs paper patron cards. He said the ocean is full of plastic. We decided then to go with paper cards. At the Milbridge library we learned that it is better to have volunteers and no librarian than it is to have one librarian and no volunteers.