I have 14 totes of nice books, mostly on woodworking, landscaping, lots of cookbooks, and lots of musical scores (some loose, mostly in bound books).
I can't give them away.
It's enough for hundreds of "Little Free Libraries" and suppose that I built the enclosures in my shop, nobody would put up a base.
I would love to see some young person or immigrant learn some useful skills. Prison libraries wouldn't take them, unless I DELIVER them to their doorstep (or gate, I suppose). Nobody cares. That's the state our society is in now.
I am reminded of a PhD I worked with who wanted the world on a platter, but DELIVERED to him. I find this syndrome among a lot of people.
1. I want it ALL
2. I want it FREE
3. I want it NOW, and
4. I want it DELIVERED on a SILVER PLATTER.
People are just comatose. They talk about doing good, and leave it at the "listen to me" stage. I am reminded of a story by the Venerable Sangharakshita.
> From Lecture 095 "The Universal Perspective of Mahayana Buddhism" by Sangharakshita:
> Let's suppose that there is a great famine somewhere - the sort of terrible famine that you still get even now sometimes in India. There's no food. Everybody is starving. Everybody is gaunt, famished, skeleton-like. And there's terrible suffering. Now in a certain town in the country where this famine has occurred there happen to be two men who have an enormous quantity of grain, quite enough to feed all of the people. One of the men is old, the other is young. Now, what does the old man do? He puts up a notice outside his front door. And the notice reads: 'Whoever comes will be given food.'
> Now what about the young man - what does he do? The young man takes a great sack of grain on his back, and he goes from door to door distributing the grain, and when one sack becomes empty, he rushes back home and gets another one. And in this way distributes a great deal of grain all over the town. He gives the grain away to whoever asks. And he's so keen on getting the grain to the people that he doesn't mind going into the poorest and the dirtiest and the darkest of hovels. He doesn't even mind going into places where respectable people don't usually venture. Because there's only one idea in his mind, and the idea is that everybody must be fed, nobody should be allowed to starve.
Not one book should go to the landfill, and I have seen the local library do it, if there is a single person who wants to read and can't afford books.
Reminder to everyone. Get off your overused asses and share a little of your "too much and never enough" with others, with emphasis on getting separating fanny from couch.
I'll just keep trying.
WHY DO I LOVE BOOKS?
My Dad used to read books to my brother and me. I learned to read from those books. I gave them to my young daughter. In 1999, I lost both parents, and while I was paying my last respects to Mom, my wife (now ex-wife) asked my daughter if she was reading those "old" books (First editions, mostly, by Thornton Burgess, of "Mother West Wind" fame.) My daughter, being very young, said no, so off they all went to the Goodwill, behind my back, not thinking at all that a young kid had absolutely no way of buying such books, and NOT asking if her Dad gave them to her. But Tiger Moms are like that. That was around Christmas time. Come Eastertime, I wondered where the books went, and found out. Family heirlooms gone.
In a form of compensation, I did manage to buy similar, if not identical, books at Moe's Bookstore over time, just so there wouldn't be this big hole in my life. They're on my shelves now. It's my daughter's choice whether to have kids, but at least I closed that loop.
Just because you don't value something doesn't mean that it has no value to someone else. Some people think that the world revolves around them, and don't consider what anyone else thinks, wants, needs or values.
I will find a way.