Little Free Libraries and More

Visit #1233, Sunday 16 February 20, 8:50-10:45AM, 3.2 miles, 3.2lbs. of litter.

Temps in the 30's, reaching 40 today, sunny.

Last week's work left me with two new tasks to put on this week's chalkboard.

I wanted to remove the fallen tree I found last week.

So, this week I hiked to the spot, and brought a bow saw to remove the tree.

It took me 15 minutes.

The other task was on the slopes I crawled along last week. I've been on those steep pitches once a year for many years, and there are, left from long ago, pieces of iron no doubt tossed over the Castle Craig wall at some point. I thought if I retrieve one piece a year, eventually I will have removed everything.

This year begins with the piece which sticks out in my mind the most and was easiest to locate. I failed to photograph it until I dropped off my bag of trash, so my pics are out of order this week to show you what I carried back to the park from below Castle Craig.

I wish I knew how old it was, and what part it played in Castle Craig's history. That will remain a mystery, I guess. It was clumsy to carry back to the parking lot but I managed. I weighed it at 23lbs. .

Prior to starting this week's fun, I had a few books, three of which I read while in Chicago for two weeks in January. I wanted to donate the books to the Free Little Library which was added this past summer to Hubbard Park adjacent to the playscape.

"Casual Suppers": Mostly one-pan meal recipes. The Pork Chops with Apples and Sauerkraut was tasty, and good ammo for fart contests.

"Calypso" by David Sedaris: More snark and sarcasm by the author of "Santaland Diaries", among other popular works. "Calypso" is his latest book.

"The Fifth Risk" by Michael Lewis. Spoiler Alert: the Fifth Risk is "Project Management". The book lays out what happens "if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works.", which is what Michael discovers is what happened when Donald Trump won the Presidency. Lewis has a knack for explaining complex issues in terms that knuckle-draggers like myself can understand.
I've also read "Liar's Poker", "Flash Boys", and "The Big Short" and can recommend them, too!

I saved the best for last: "Processed Cheese" by Stephen Wright. As I mentioned earlier, I was in Chicago in January. I was in the middle of nowhere, where no sidewalk ought to be, when I chanced upon a Little Free Library. Inside was "Processed Cheese". When I saw the author was Stephen Wright, I thought it was the dry comedian:

Boy; was I wrong.

The book goes like this: Graveyard (all characters in the book have no last name, and their first names' are weird, like Ambiance, and MissusMenu) walks by a tall building when Missus Menu, in a fit of anger, tosses a dufflebag full of money from the penthouse apartment of obscenely rich MisterMenu. Unemployed scumbag Graveyard picks up the bag, and the rest of the book is Graveyard and his trailerpark girlfriend Ambiance spending their newfound wealth with reckless abandon while MisterMenu tries to find the "thief" and get his money back. Much weird sex, weird drugs, weired booze, more weird names and other assorted weirdness ensue.

When I picked this book out of the Little Free Library in early January 2020, it wasn't even officially published! Click on THIS link, scroll down, and read the first chapter, then run over to Hubbard Park's Little Free Library and grab the book!

Not quite as strange as the book was this note I found:

It says, "Bob is dying bad kidney no more (Mike? Nine? Nike?)"

Further on, I found this letterbox, which I'd previously found, had been compromised, likely because someone put a snack in the Tupperware container, and critters found it. All that was left was the wrapper.

Finally, on today's hike I found Season of the Missing Glove 2019/20, entries 14 and 15.

Cheers!