Shifting Books

I have been working daily at the library since a week ago Friday, shifting around 30,000 books. Most are moving around 100 feet, and we have carts to carry them, but I still have to pick them up and put them down twice each. Often there is bending and stretching. The result is sore muscles. Every day I come home exhausted and have a beer or glass of wine, and a tall glass of water. You sweat like a pig while doing this work. I take a shower afterwards. Who knew that being a librarian means sweating like a pig and needing a shower afterwards?

I've discovered quite a few really interesting books as I shift around the non-fiction and oversized. There's some great ones on home building. If I were in county government with a too-small middle class, I would be lowering the fees for new building permits and setup a method to scale those fees to the house size so it is actually possible to move here for less than $500K. Lots of poor and middle class retirees should be able to live in a small house, if such houses had a financial reason to exist. Too many of those built here are 3-5 bedroom mansions for very large sums of money. Most of them have 3 car garages. Up here that's actually a good idea, but the local tiny houses only really need a 1-2 car garage.

The books in the oversize area contain building plans completely appropriate to the area, including some really nice Victorians. We really need more of those here. The Modernist ones mostly suck, and in time they look stupidly crass, which drags down their value, whereas Craftsman Bungalows hold their looks and value and as we become a post-car culture they will become much more obvious living in the long-term. Particularly since it seems that a thermite battery isn't going to happen. A pity. Lithium polymer is better than nothing, but only just. For the cost, a Scooter is better, and requires less maintenance.

We really need that sort of thing. I have found that adapting to poverty is mostly a matter of resignation, that reality rejects white males until something needs doing, and then we matter until that thing is done, at which point we're told to die again. Small wonder the dream of white males is to go to places with no other people, build our own stuff and deny entrance to the hateful sexist and racist buggers that want to steal it from us. I'd rather burn it down than give it to them. And the haters insist they deserve it because "You didn't build that".

Someday, with sufficient knowledge and the right voice for each character, I will be able to do a good job writing a novel for the California we deserve, one with buildings like in Italy, with hurricanes and rainstorms and heavy tile roofs, and narrow streets because we will become pedestrians again, walking to the train station or bus stop, no longer pretending to be relevant in a car culture that has died. My own car is dying and will stop running soon enough. This is sad, and expensive, since all this work I'm doing won't pay for repairs. Soon I'll be bicycling to this volunteer job, and won't that be a hassle in the afternoon heat? Sigh.