Donating my Library -Periods and Passions

May 12, 2026 - This Saturday, My great-=niece Alex and her husband, Rob, worked for me for 2 hour s@ $25 per hour each, taking down my Art books from a floor to ceiling high book shelf in the stairwell to my attic. Rob climbed up on the step ladder and took the books down, Alex catalogued them,and I dusted them and sorted them into keepers and donatables.

I am donating my Art Books to the South Jersey Artists Coalition for their just being created resource library. This gives me the push I needed to let go of books that I was no longer using. This bookcase is the final holdout of a huge lifelong collection. All my other collections have been donated to the Free Books Project in Camden City. Those books went into book Arks all over the City - 1,500 to be exact. Suburu Corporation sponsors this project and Tom Martin, who lives in Collingswood is the head of the project. I have been donating to his project for 5 years, thousands of books and so have my friends who have down sized and moved.

Each of my collection describes a period of my life. The first collection to go were my health books,, books like "BLUE ZONES" and all my vegan and vegetarian cookbooks, my Heart books by Dr. Dean Ornish, yoga books, self-help psychology books. Next went my fiction - all of Klaus Ove Knarsgard's volumes "MY Struggle," All my fiction and memoir. After that went all the history: Revolutionary War, Civil War, World War 1 and World War 2. Then the New Jersey books - everything from Pine Barrens history books to Cape May beach books. After that, the poetry collection from the attic.

Previously I had donated all my Women's History books to The Alice Paul Foundation Library in Mt. Laurel, NJ.

I still have clusters of books here and there - my coffee table books about Ireland, Scotland and I still have 3 shelves of Art Books to go through.

The Art Books went last because I can still see pictures although I can't read text anymore. As I have mentioned before, I am losing my vision. I have Fuch's Dystrophy and although that seems cruel that an artist and writer should be stripped of her vision, it is a small blow compared to the loss of memory and thinking skills some of my brilliant friends have suffered.

The Librarian, Tom Clapham, a brilliant man with a remarkable memory who could answer just about any question I might ask over the 40 or more years of our friendship, was the first of my friends to lose his memory. His dementia showed up first as his inability to find words. He would be stuck mid sentence in a kind of trance. Eventually he couldn't hold a conversation at all. Also, he lost things everywhere and he was a fussy sort of person who had to carry a great many items wherever he went, umbrella, vinyl stachel, sunglasses, hat. Whenever I drove him somewhere, as he had never had a driver's license or car, he inevitably phoned me when I got home from dropping him off, to tell me he had left his glasses in my car, or his satchel, or his hat, and I would have to drive back to return them. On top of that, he wouldn't come out when I got there. I would phone to tell him I had returned, and beep the horn, and wait. He kept everyone waiting. He seemed to slow down to mostly stopped. He would ask me not to beep because it disturbed his neighbors. He left few options for resolving things and had no concept of inconveniencing others. He is gone now, deep into the 'Land of the Lost' with family members somewhere in Maryland. He can't speak at all now. He would be early 80's this summer if he is still living.

Each of those collections of books represented a period of my life when I had a passionate interest, a deep hunger for information. I would devour the books I bought on whatever that subject would be. My mind drank the information which opened up worlds to me.

That experience was the one I had experienced from my early chidhood. When I read my mind absorbed and created the worlds I read about inside my head. I went into them. That is why books like Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery, were so intoxicating to me because her descriptions of the natural world of Prince Edward Island, the groves of wild flowers "The White Way" and the fragrances and blossoms bloomed in my mind. That whole world came alive inside my mind in a more intimate way than movies did.

I almost forgot my mystery collection. When my father died in 2011, I read every single book by Agatha Christie, P. D. James and Dorothy Sayers. I read Patricia Highsmith too, but didn't care for her as much - too much malice. I think the reason I needed and dove so deeply into mysteries during that period of suffering which was compounded by having lost my mother first and then my father - both parents, was that seemingly unsolvable tragedies could be solved by the right detective. An old lady who listened carefully and observed closely like Miss Marple, could put together the puzzle pieces and see the whole picture. Because I was gifted with the ability to really become part of what I was reading, books saved me from emotional pain.

Books were my sanctuary, my escape, my guide through the treacherous jungle of living, my adventure, my road maps, and my companions. I can remember the books I read at various times of travel such as reading Pioneer Women in an airport while I waited for my flight to meet my fiance' - an ultra-marathoner named Rob Sweetgall. I was taking a plane out west while the women in the book were traveling by covered wagon. I remember reading about the women who lost their minds in the solitude of the prairies with the solitude and the endless moaning of the wind as the only sound. So many had been eduated women from small towns where a woman could have expected to be surrounded by loving family while she endured the danger and excruciating pain of childbirth. She could celebrate the holidays and important occasions of life with family and friends and church congregations in the small, safe, cosy town where she grew up, but instead she was alone in a rough cabin with no neighbors, no town, no doctor, no midwife, nothing but flat prairie and endless moaning wind while her husband who had lured her into this hell was off hunting or getting lumber for weeks on end.

Epic Voyages: In the airport on the way to Germany after I married to my high school sweetheart who had been drafted and sent to Europe, I was reading the Voyage of Charles Darwin on the Beagle. This was not my first trip on the high seas. Starting in early childhood with Treasure Island, and later Gordon McKay in a tv show called Adventures in Paradise, plus the epic Hawaii by James Michener, I had been traveling to the South Seas for some time. My favorite book on that subject was the one I borrowed from the Maple Shade Library in 1957, after my family had moved there from Philadelphia. It was my first Library card and I was intoxicated by the miracle of a place where I could borrow any book I wanted from rooms filled with books, and the book I chose was The trilogy that included Mutiny on the Bounty, and Men Against the Sea, Pitcairn Island, authors Charles Nordhoff and James Hall. I remember reaching up and picking out the royal blue cloth covered hard bound book with the title embossed in neat faded gold letters. The last book I read about Pitcairn Island, about five years ago in 2020 was a journalist's follow-up, an expose' about generations of child sexual exploitation that had become part of the culture of the descendants of the original mutineers. First the mutineers kidnapped Tahitians to enslave the men and breed with the women. They killed the men. Then the nine mutineers fell to fighting amongst themselves and killed one another until only one man was left The current inhabitants of Pitcairn Island are the people who descended from the Tahitian women and the murdered mutineers, and the men descended from this family tree took to sexually exploiting the female children in each generation. The generations of women who grew up in this culture just accepted it as their fate although some tried to send their children away to boarding schools to get away. Eventually the men were convicted and imprisoned on their own island in a prison they built.

For some years now, as my vision became more and more impaired, I took to listening to audio books which I love. I am trying to remember the last book I actually read. The final collection was books by journalists who explored a variety of subjects such as "Salt" and "Cod" and the hisory of how these products and industries evolved. Maybe "Nomadland" was the last non-fiction book I read. I think the last fiction was the series called "Three Pines." That was a murder mystery series set in Canada.

Fortunately, although that great passion has been taken from me, my ability to paint has improved, or at least I think it has - who knows if what I see is what others see. Anyhow I won a prize in March of this year for 15 miniatures I painted of women of exceptional contributions to the world. And I have had four portraits in two shows this Spring.

This brings us back to Art Books. I haven't come across my first Art books yet in the shelf clearing process. I bought three or four volumes from a set on famous artists when I was about 16 or in 1961. They were on a sale table in the entryway of a book store that was in the Cherry Hill Mall which was opened in 1961, the first climate controlled enclosed mall on the East Coast and the largest mall in America. The books were something like $4.95, affordable in a time when books were far more expensive. I bought Toulous lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh, and Gauguin. I still have them and I will keep them along with some of my favorite women artists when I come across their books in the clearing out process..

It is inevitably a sad thing, this clearing out and one I have long rebelled against. The Swedish Death Clearing trend that was so popular in the past couple of decades, I found it particulary outrageous - to suggest I should clear myself out before I die so I don't leave any work for my descendants! Erase myself and my material culture record, how self-effacing. Why shouldn't my daughter do that for me? Perhaps it would help with the grief.

Well, time to get on with more than my blog post for today - so Happy Trails!

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