How to Organize My Books

 

I have books.  There are books in pretty much every room in the house, though we don't keep books in the bathrooms.   

The other day I wanted to show someone a book, but I couldn't find it. (Bob, if you're reading this I did find it just now when I went down to take these pictures.)  I'm also looking for some of my old journals in hopes they can ground me as I write vignettes about my Peace Corps experiences.  This is spurred on by my writing group.  Basically, I took a class through OLÉ - the lifelong education program through the University of Alaska Anchorage.  

I thought signing up for a writing class would help me write the book for my youngest grandchild.  The other two grandkids got their own books already.  This one was going to be about her great grandmother, whom she is named after.  And it worked.  I wrote parts each week and I have the basic text done.  Now I have to work on the illustrations and mesh them with the text.  

But when the class was about over, the convener said that the weekly meetings would continue and that some of the members had been in the class for several years already.  About that time I got an email from the National Peace Corps Association that gave a step by step how-to booklet on writing about your Peace Corps experience - from the writing to finding an agent and a publisher.  

So I started writing.  But while I could find a couple of old journals that covered my Peace Corps time, others were missing.  

So tackling the biggest bookshelf seemed like a good project.  

Organizing books sounds easy.  Do it by topic.  Or should it be by genre - fiction or non-fiction or poetry or travel books?  What about books that span different topics or genres?

I started with topics.  I pulled out the bird books and the ones that help to identify insects and plants, and mushrooms.  This was going fine until I had books that fit the topic, but not the shelf.  Too big.

There's another problem with sorting books - it's hard not to start reading them.  The Shape of Thought is a book about writing - which is relevant to the writing class. 

 Maybe I can add some ideas to the group. (People are invited to read other writing than their own on occasion.) The book says writing has three basic purposes:

1. entertainment
2. explanation
3. convince

Really, is that all?  I have to think about it.  But then the book offers  ten patterns with which to do those things:

1. Basic Structures:  Introduction, Body and Conclusions
2. Narration
3. Description
4. Definition
5. Process Analysis
6. Classification
7. Comparison/Contrast
8. Judgment
9. Cause and Effect
10. Problem and Solution

Each pattern is a chapter with writings of famous and not so famous writers.  I jumped to the last one in the book, written by Art Buchwald that advocated for gun stamps for the poor, because "no American citizen, no matter what his financial status, would be deprived of his right to bear arms."  And "Many of the poor are to blame for this condition [not owning a gun].  They would rather buy food with their money than guns,"   [If it's not obvious, Buchwald was a satirist.]

And I also got distracted by The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richmond Latimore..  I read, and, thanks to a great instructor - Dr. Pasinetti - enjoyed The Odyssey in college.  But I never read The Iliad.  And having toured the remains of the ancient city of Troy last October while we were in Turkey, I had lots of questions.  So I read a few pages of the Iliad but mostly I read the introduction which is 55 pages long.  

The intro covers a number of topics - the plot, questions about Homer and when and where he lived, the Greek Gods' roles in all this, etc.  I just wanted a better sense of the plot.  

"The essential story may be summarized as follows:  Paris, also called Alexandros, was the son of Priam, who was King of Troy, a city in the north-west corner of Asia Mior.  Paris on an overseas voyage was entertained by Menelaos in Sparta, and from there carried away, with her full consent, Helen, the wife of Menelaos.  He took her back with him to Troy, where she lived with him as his wife.  The princes of Greece thereupon raised a force of a thousand or more ships, manned by fighters, with a view to forcing the return of Helen.  The armada was led by Agamemnon, elder brother of Menelaos, the King of Mykenai . . .The fleet assembled in Aulis in Boiotia and made for Troy.  There the Greeks landed after a fight, but were unable to take the city.  For nine years they remained before Troy, keeping the Trojans on the defensive, and storming and plundering various places in the vicinity.  In the tenth year, Agamemnon the most powerful chief, quarreled with Achilleus, his most powerful fighting man.  Achilleus withdrew from the fighting, and kept his followers idle as well.  In his absence, the Trojans, led by Hector (a son of Priam and brother of Paris), temporarily got the better of their enemies and threatened to destroy the ships.  Achilleus returned to the fighting, killed Hector and routed the Trojans."

 

But why did Achilleus and Agamemnon quarrel?  That's revealed later.  

"Chryses, priest of Apollo in Chris, a small place near Troy, comes to the camp of the Greeks to ask for the return of his daughter, Chryseis, who has been captured and allotted to Agamemnon as his concubine.  Agamemnon refuses, and Chryses prays to Apollo to avenge him.  Apollo inflicts a plague upon the Greeks.  When there is no end in sight and the people are dying, Achilles calls an assembly of the chiefs to consider what can be done.  With the support and encouragement of Achilleus, Kalchas the soothsayer explains the wrath of Apollo.  Agamemnon, though angry, agrees to give the girl back and propitiate the god, but demands that some other leader give up his mistress to him, in place of Chryseis.  When Achilleus opposes this demand, Agamemnon takes away Briseis, the concubine of Achilleus. . ." 

Of course, we all know that Troy was sacked to recover the kidnapped Helen.  But from the description it would appear that every 'leader' in Agamemnon's fleet had his own concubine, and Agamemnon appropriates his best fighter's concubine as his own, leading Achilleus to withdraw from fighting which leads to Hector's initial victory.  

In light of the Epstein scandals today, one (at least this writer) can't help but think that men's need for sex objects plays an oversized  role in society and in the suffering of humankind.  After all, they did battle for ten years over a stolen woman!  The Greeks almost had their ships destroyed by Hector, again over a stolen woman (Agamemnon's taking of Achilleus' concubine.).  

In the case of Troy and Greece, there were two powerful entities who fought it out.  And Achilleus had leverage to use against Agamemnon.  But today we seem to have a class of rich men who have found a way to exploit women with little or no counterforce.  (Along with not so rich men who have some other skill that allows them inclusion in the club.)

To be clear, I'm exploring this idea here rather than making firm conclusions.  And while the men of Ancient Greece and Troy may have done battle over specific women, what seems clear from the discussion is that the women had no say in any of this.  Homer translator Latimore tells us that all the leaders of Agamemnon's army had mistresses.  

I'm leaning toward some sort of conclusion that for at least the last 3000 years (the sacking of Troy as related by Homer, whether history, historical fiction, or fiction happened about 1300 BC and women have only gotten the right to vote, the right to an education, to spend money without their husbands' permission, to compete for 'men's' jobs in the last 100 years or so.  (I'm assuming there were some brief periods in isolated locations where women had, for a time, some of these rights.)

Not to mention dragging thousands of others into suffering the wars of the egocentric 'leaders - the soldiers and sailers, the citizens of Troy and surrounding areas, and today the Ukrainians still being bombarded without mercy by Putin's military.  Not to mention the people of Gaza and Lebanon and Iran and elsewhere around the world.  

And in the United States, we now have a president whose treatment of women is not different from the ancient Greeks and that seems to have brought the misogynists out of the woodworks.  This is a more universal problem than USians realize.  Is it built in to men's genes?  Some men's genes?  Is it nurtured by parents, by society?  Is it curable?  

All this from trying to bring order to my book cases.  And that's just a tiny fraction of how I spend my time.  The garden beckons.  Fighting the corruption of the GOP beckons.  My bike and the bike trails beckon.  

Of course, I don't raise questions here, without checking online after I've done my own brainstorming.  Here's a list a ways to organize one's books from WikiHow

1. by genre
2. alphabetically 
3. by color
4. by subject
5. chronologically
6. put rare or valuable books in a noticeable spot
7. by how much you like them
8. by how much you use them
9. by size
10. by date you got them

To a certain extent I use the following:  1, 4, 6, 7, and 9.  It seems to me that organizing by color is for someone who sees books as decoration rather than reading material, but that's just my first reaction and I'm willing to be corrected.  

Fresh Greens In Anchorage

 An acquaintance told me about Anchorage Greens.  It's sort of near the Campbell Creek south bike trail, so on my way back, after the moose, and after the Taku Lake, I took the exit to Taku Elementary and on to Old Seward.

Getting across Old Seward on the bike took a while.  It's between Old and New Seward.  This unique food store is on 1207 E. 73rd (but it doesn't go through to Old Seward, so you have to take 72nd.)

(The sun made a few brief appearances yesterday.  You can see the bit of blue sky.  Windy too.)

Inside is a green paradise.  

Here's the hydroponic growing room

And here's Aiden, who also grows mushrooms.  

The link to their site gives more info.

Lake Otis Elementary School Wake

 Back in April I wrote about the School Board meeting when the Board voted to close  Lake Otis, Fire Lake, and Campbell Stem schools.

Tuesday afternoon, Lake Otis Elementary, where I've been volunteering in a third grade class for the last three years, held a wake.  They called it a tribute.  

Lots of folks showed up - alumni, former LO teachers, parents, current students, and folks from the neighborhood.  

 

More people were inside.

And the hallways were lined with boxes teachers and staff have already packed to go to Tudor and Rogers Park schools that seem to be taking most of the Lake Otis students next fall.

There was plenty of pizza.

Sweets

And there was a little bit of healthy food.

Below is Steve Waldron who went to Lake Otis when it opened in 1955!

Here's a picture of all the School Board Members who came.  To be fair, they were at a special school board meeting.  The school didn't have a lot of options though.  It's the last week of school

The musicians had moved into the cafeteria and a lot of the kids were dancing to the music.  

Here's a future student, but probably not at Lake Otis.  I say 'probably' because when enrollments eventually go back up, maybe it will reopen as a local neighborhood school

There were a couple of tables with old yearbooks

I didn't get to find out why this young man was at the event.  I assumed he was an alumnus or the older sibling of a kid at Lake Otis now.  But the opportunity to get the picture happened quickly and I took it.

Denali Time

We've been going up to Denali National Park in the spring before the busses take tourists into the park for over 20 years.  It's a brief time when you can drive out to Teklanika campground (30 miles in.)  Once the busses begin, the road is closed at Savage River (12 miles in.)

It's a time before things turn green, but there are fewer people around, campgrounds (but they were $55 a night, half that for Senior and other National Park Pass holders) are easy to get, and you can take your time, stopping where you want, as long as you want, taking in the magnificent views, and animals.  

This year there was still more snow than normal - lingering from this record breaking winter.  When we complained that we had seen no caribou at all (normally guaranteed) we were told that they are late arriving this year, probably because of the snow.  

We left Anchorage Thursday morning, with some sunshine in Anchorage, but as we drove north it got cloudy and we had short bouts of rain and wet pavement then dry pavement much of the way.  

There was a surprisingly good view at the Denali view point at mile 135.  You couldn't see Denali, but you could see all the smaller mountains. (these are eight and nine thousand foot peaks.)

People at the viewpoint tend to talk to each other and ask where everyone is from.  When they learned we were from Anchorage they wanted to know which mountain was Denali.  I had to say, "None of them.  It's the one towering above behind the clouds."  Then I checked my camera and found my picture from exactly two years earlier and shared it.  (The bottom photo was with a telephoto lens so there's some distortion between the two, but you get the point.)

As I compare the two images, it's interesting that there was more snow two years ago, because that definitely wasn't the case north of the mountain, in the park.  The mountains you see in the top picture almost look like they are part of Denali in the lower picture.  But they are all separate mountain peaks, about half the height of Denali.  

Gas prices were interesting.  The cheapest in Anchorage is around $5.49.  In Wasilla, there are stations advertising $5.19 and a few on the outskirts with $4.99. (Anchorage has a local tax on gas that raises the price.)  The Talkeetna turnoff station has $4.95 for the lowest grade.  

But in Cantwell, where the old Native run station seems to be closed down, the Vitus station is raking it in. (Yeah, regular was $6.45/gallon.)

We were tired when we got to the campground and made dinner and got into bed.  It wasn't sunny, but it also wasn't as cold as we expected.  

One of the many  awesome aspects of Denali is its vastness.  You can see wild landscape that seems to stretch out forever.  Below are two photos meshed together because one wide angle picture is way too small.  And as one tourist we met says, "The pictures don't come close to capturing it."

Below are some more photos from Friday, a gray day with occasional sprinkles.  

Here's J walking  down from the Teklanika parking lot and viewpoint where the road ends.  You can walk the mile down to the bridge over the Teklanika River.  Though beyond the bridge was closed off due to " a scheduled bear capture operation." (This for research, not to remove the bears.)

This is a view from the bridge.  It's not a black and white photo, but looks lie one.

There are a couple of large ponds (not sure how big it has to be to be called a lake) near the Teklanika campground where we can normally see waterfowl.  One still had a lot of ice and I didn't see any birds.  

But the other one had Northern Shovelers.  Pictures in bird books often show the males with green heads.  These had black heads.  I asked the bird guide on Saturday and she said the green shows iridescent when the sun is right.  

We were stopped at an overview, relaxing when a car stopped and asked if we'd seen any caribou.  They hadn't either, but they said there was a bear about 3 miles down the road.  

And not much later, we saw a driver looking out over his car.  Following his gaze we saw a big blonde bear sleeping on the tundra.  After a while, he raised his head, move a little further away, and crashed again.  

This raven was making a racket.

There were lots of ptarmigan on the road.  They're in the process of transitioning from the white winter plumage to the summer brown.  

When we got back Friday afternoon, there was someone parked in our campsite.  I wouldn't even mention this - he simply didn't see the paper clipped on the site marker, and since the site across the road was nice and was empty, we just pulled in there.  But I'm mentioning it because the vehicle was

 from Storyteller

unlike any I'd ever seen.  It was dark gray, almost black and looked like a combination of a truck and a tank.  It was big.  The license plate said Storyteller and I mentioned he could tell us a story.  No, he said, that's the name of the company that makes the vehicle.  He'd driven this thing up from Birmingham, Alabama and I don't know why I didn't take a picture.  

But I looked up Storyteller when we got home.  It's a company that makes very expensive and fancy campers.  

The picture is from Storyteller.  The sticker price for this model is $799,784 or $5385 per month.

There are different models and this seems to look like the one we saw.    Look for it in Anchorage this week, where the driver was going to meet his wife who flies up to Anchorage regularly for work.  

I guess there is a market for luxury goods for all those in the $50 million and up category.  

The next morning there was sun and we'd found an 8:30am bird walk listed on the Denali Website at Mountain Vista trail, near the Savage River campground.  We turned out to be the only visitors for the walk and our guide, Autumn, was great.  She identified a number of small birds by their calls and some we saw.  And at one point, we saw that Denali was out of the clouds.  

I identified the bird on the right, which is a heftier bird than the picture shows, as a gray jay, but Autumn told me it is now called a Canada Jay.

Below is a white crowned sparrow.  When we mentioned the bear and I showed her a picture, Autumn thought it might have been one of the bears that had been tranquilized.  

The artwork below is what I'm calling 'stained ice' - which was naturally formed on the trail.  

As magnificent as the park was on Friday, the sunshine on Saturday added to its glory. 

Below you can see the landscape with Denali seeming to rise over the horizon.

And a closer look at North America's tallest mountain through the telephoto lens.

And then we turned around and headed to the Alaska Geographic bookstore next to the Visitors Center and then toward home. 

We had lunch at a pullout along the Nenana River, just north of Cantwell.  The 'shoreline' in the middle on the other side of the river is actually large blocks of ice stacked up.  As we ate, ice floated by along the river.  The Denali rivers flow north, into the Nenana, and then the Yukon according to Autumn.

A couple of hours later we got back to the Denali South Viewpoint.  It had clouded up again as we drove south, but we walked back up to the viewpoint, where three young men from Orange County, California told us the mountain had been out.  There had been a cloud obscuring the middle, but the bottom and the top had been visible.  As we chatted, one of them said he thought the mountain was visible again.  I took this picture, but it wasn't until I got home and looked carefully, could I see the white of the mountain showing through the grayer clouds.  

Now we're back home.  It's gray and the weather app says that won't change in the next ten days.  Temps will get up to 50˚F (10˚C) and a little above.  But the plants know summer is coming and the birch leaves are showing green, though they aren't fully open.  

This All Sounds So Familiar

 From Peter Pmerantsev,  How to Win an Information War

"Describing the allure of such reality-denying propaganda, the German Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt, who had fled Nazi Germany and eventually immigrated to the US in 1941, described how Germans, lost in  "an ever-changing, incomprehensible world . . . are obsessed by a desire to escape from reality because in their essential homelessness they can no longer
bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects. . .What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part."

Instead of "evidence," whether fake or real, what people were looking for was a larger sense that they were special, that they were surrounded by enemies, that they were part of a common destiny.  Fealty to the leadership became a value in itself.  The Nazi leadership could often change their policies - at one moment the USSR was an ally;  the next moment Germany war at war with it - but such inconsistencies didn't matter, thought Arendt.  In a world where Germany was portrayed as being surrounded by malign, deceptive, endless conspiracies, the leaders duty was to lie:

"The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood . . .they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness. . .

The essential conviction shared by all ranks, from fellow-traveler to leader, is that politics is a game of cheating and that the "first commandment" of the movement:  "The Fuehrer is always right," is as necessary for the purposes of world politics - i.e. world-wide cheating - as the rules of military discipline are for the purposes of war."  (pp 90-91, emphasis added)