late friday afternoon in galesburg illinois and my kids are home from school, relaxing or sleeping, glad for a long week to be over. my wife is getting a cat-scan which gives us both trepidation, her because her health is at stake and i because i love her dearly. as a result my fanatic read-marketing is difficult because i can't keep my mind on anything i'm reading.

a friend came to visit from iowa city; he'd actually been on the train to west virginia and was on his way back. he's an old friend, and we had lots in common, both having married powerful academic women and adopted cross-racially. it was interesting that we had that much in common but soon we found more. he stayed for dinner and went back to iowa with a handful of books.

the other day i got bagels and lox and a new york times just for nostalgia's sake, and got only a quarter of the way through the times when i got distracted by the stuff i have going on around here. i am actually operating on several levels, working on my marketing, and with all the distraction have put aside the history book i'm writing which really needs my undivided attention. i might be able to get to it this weekend - i should in fact be doing it now, while my wife is gone - but something has been holding me back. in times like this i turn to fanatic read-marketing and also a kind of paperback marketing, where i apply my skills to sinking money back into amazon to create more paperbacks in this world. slowly but slowly i'll fill the world with my own stories, so if you find a little free library it will almost certainly have my voice in it, but for now it's all i can do to fill the ones in galesburg.

i went to a cubs game around the first, actually on the first, took my son and took my other son who lives in chicago, and who is more of a sox fan, but nevertheless didn't mind a cool fall day in the friendly confines. the stadium wasn't full as both the cubs and reds are pretty bad this year, but it was a pleasant experience nonetheless, with the crowd drinking a bit and having lots of their ritual fun including singing and swaying to the music. the rooftops around wrigley all have bleachers on them and that actually expands the audience a bit. i thought of taking books down there, filling up little-free-libraries in the big city, but wasn't organized enough. organized means having the books ready, and knowing where to take them. this is more of a long term goal. i'm working on getting the books. for the most part they will be leftover books, made available by my changing covers and having newer ones to sell. and i'm working on that, too.

however i have a son coming in for thanksgiving, flying in to st. louis, and that will be another opportunity. one goes to cities every once in a while up here; it's not impossible, it's not even bad, you just get used to it, and all these towns have little-free-libraries which i need to familiarize myself with. it brings up what i consider an issue of the day.

the issue at its heart is that a lot of us book lovers, my age, are dying, and the books have nowhere to go. books are still inherently valuable, but we have generations that don't care much, and many of these books are at risk of being simply tossed in the dumpster. a nationwide network should be made to prevent their falling in the dumpster. another part of this movement would be to keep little-free-libraries stocked nationwide, particularly those which see action where people are actually reading. now i'm not sure if they actually get any action at all; this might be a pipe dream; maybe those l-f-ls are just sitting there looking pretty. but my point is that a national organization could oversee this and make sure that enough books get in the hands of enough people. it would be an interesting crusade.

i think it would involve having allies in different parts of the country, something i'm good at. and having allies who care about books - that's another one of my strengths. but finally, it would require some travel. for example, somebody dies and their relatives contact this non-profit. somebody comes and scoops up all the books. but some could be valuable. somebody else has to look through them to see what's there. the books have to find their way to a regional warehouse of some kind. somebody somewhere is keeping track of who has what and where, and also getting a book to someone who may want it somewhere. an arm of the charity sets to work putting the books on e-bay or some other place where people can see what's available. and what's left systematically goes out to the little-free-libraries, maybe, or fills up a free warehouse in a god-forsaken place that needs tourists.

in europe somewhere there is actually an entire village given over to books, and we could have one of the same - somebody buys up all the old buildings, sets to making them atmospherically desirable, then fills them with books - and of course the town has good coffee shops and maybe mountains and a river right outside of it. this of course would be paradise for places to live, the place to go, the place to while away the hours of one's life.

all a pipe dream too, except that in various iterations some people have actually made some of it happen. it is possible. one just has to focus on it a little.

cubs won. season ended. guardians made it to playoffs, and they won too, today, their first game. it's a fall that will energize me, if i make it through.