Ramblings about books, book selling, and things

I have been trying not to use my blog for any sort of merchandising or promoting of financial activities...even for myself. I still do not intend to actively promote anything however I will from time to time (hopefully very seldom) make a mention of my efforts of trying to sell used books.
As some of my readers know I have been trying to sell used books for the past eight years. For a little while I was making a fairly good run at it until the economy began to turn in early 2007. What's that? The economy didn't crash until late 2008. No, economies don't crash all of a sudden. There is a build up to it and the more government tries to fix it, the worse it gets.
In April 2007 I began noticing a decrease in sales. While my inventory never did include the so-called "valuable" books, I did, and still do, have a small inventory of books priced in the $50 to $300 range. It was these books that stopped selling first. Over the past 5 years even the least expensive books have stopped selling. Some people say that it wasn't necessarily the economy that caused my books to stop selling, but the advances in digital technology. That may have had some effect, but in my case, very little. Most of my holding are of books that are older and have not been or ever will be digitized. Even the USGS (U.S. Geological Society) publications that I have still sell even though they are almost all available online at no or very little cost through the USGS. Some books you just need to feel in your hand and in dealing with scientific reports the ability to pencil in margin notes when doing your own research is essential.
I still sell the books that I have, but very rarely do I add any inventory. I sell online through two venues, amazon.com and biblio.com. I am trying to deplete my inventory and only have 1127 books left to go. As much as I like selling and dealing with books I am afraid that in the current economic climate (very stagnant and in certain areas, such as where I live on Maryland's Eastern Shore, still in decline) it is just not a viable economic opportunity. I wish it was.

My Conversion ot Mormonism

How often do you just sit there wondering what to do? I have that problem right now. I have been in a writing drought the past 5 weeks or so. What to write about? There's so much I can say on certain events, but why draw attention to the negatives, especially with the political and economic situations being what they are. It would be too easy to whine about a Congress full of spoiled, entitled children who can't seem to play well together or an economic policy that is based on failed and discounted economic theories of the past. I want to be more positive today and not dwell on those matters even though they are still of the utmost importance. So what should I write about?
It has come to my mind that many people do not really know where I came from and how I became the person I am today. Yes, I know I have touched on a few things in my most recent blog, but there is still so much more. As many people know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon. Yesterday in church the talks dealt with conversion. I think today I will share with you the story of my conversion.
Did it really begin in 1978 when I first visited Salt Lake City and joined the church or did it actually begin in 1966 when I first read something amazing in an old encyclopedia. Probably the latter. My family had an encyclopedia set given to us that was already 10 years old at the time. Well, it was my first ever encyclopedia and I just loved flipping through it and reading the articles on different subjects. How many 10 year old kids do you know who had even heard the word zygote (the last word in the encyclopedia) or even knew what one is? I remember seeing a picture of a boy kneeling on the ground being handed some tablets from a man standing above him. I was curious so I read the accompanying brief article. It was interesting and then I moved on. Little did I know that almost 12 years later that picture would return to my memory with a fuller understanding of what it was about.
I was raised in the Protestant Episcopal Church. I recall when I was 11 attending confirmation class and studying the beliefs and practices of the church. While the rest of the kids studied the Catechism I also read the very back of the Book of Common Prayer, the section entitled "Articles of Religion." This gave me more of an in depth knowledge of the beliefs of the Episcopal Church. I was amazed at the differences between what was actually taught and practiced with what was in the "Articles of Religion." I asked the minister of the church about that and he said that the articles are just there. He didn't even recall them being taught in Seminary. I kept this in mind. When I was 14 I was placed in the Baptist Home for Children in Bethesda, Maryland. We were compelled to attend the Baptist Church, more specifically at the time, the First Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. There I learned more details about God and Jesus Christ than I ever learned from the Episcopal Church, but I never changed my church membership. I remained an Episcopalian. When I went home to Baltimore for visits I attended Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church and noticed that the worship service had changed. The went with what was known at the time as the "New Liturgy." There is no way to easily explain it. Instead of a fairly streamlined and simple service that I was used to it was full of ceremony and ritual. It was explained to me that it was how the early church worshiped. Hmmmm. Flash forward to age 21 and the Spring of 1978.
I was working at the American College of Cardiology in Bethesda at the time and was trying to decide where I should go on vacation that year. I had traveled some before and I had heard people talking about Salt Lake City and how nice a city it was. I decided that I should see for myself what everyone was talking about. Every year the College holds an convention somewhere in the US. There was an office that dealt with exclusively with that so it received promotional information from cities all over the US. I asked them for information on Salt Lake City. Within a week I had a package from the tourist center in Salt Lake and began studying it. I made my reservations at a hotel in downtown Salt Lake City (Temple Square Hotel) and bought my bus tickets. I traveled everywhere by Greyhound in those days. After a 42 hour bus ride I arrived in Salt Lake and checked in to my hotel.
My original plan was to simply clean up, eat dinner, and rest at the hotel that first night. It didn't work out that way. Once I had cleaned up from my trip I looked out my window and noticed that my room looked over Temple Square. Like a magnet I was drawn there. I walked around and saw some exhibits, spoke to some people and then took the tour. Even then I did not do things in the normal order. I still prefer to do some self-exploration before I take formal tours whenever I can. I noticed something right away. Salt Lake City did not look like a desert. It was a modern city and very green. The fact that everything was so green is what told me that some very special people had settled this area. I returned again to Temple Square after dinner and stayed until closing continuing to learn all I could about Utah, Salt Lake City and the Mormons. I learned about a very ugly part of American history. About a time when a church could be persecuted because it did not follow the basic beliefs of an existing church and had the audacity to call itself the "true church of Jesus Christ." I just wanted to learn more and more and more.
I spent three days in Salt Lake City and took all of the requisite scenic tours. Every free moment I had was spent at Temple Square, a place where the outside world just seemed to disappear. By the time I left Utah I was convinced that someday I would become a member of this church. That day came sooner than I ever dreamed it would.
I had been home for two days and had a friend over playing some games when there was a knock on the door. There were two young gentlemen in suits with name badges identifying themselves as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since I already had company they said they could return the next evening and so they did. We got to talking about what I knew about the church and its beliefs and I told them about my trip to Utah. I also told them I had many questions. They challenged me to ask my questions and they surprised me by being able to answer every one of them. They then gave me the big challenge -- the challenge of baptism. I said, "Sure. When?" They then told me they had a few lessons to teach me first but that I could be baptized in about three weeks. On July 28, 1978, I was baptized in the Kensington Ward chapel which is next door to the Washington DC Temple.
It has not always been an easy road trying to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know I can do much better, that I come short of expectations in so many ways. The gospel teaches us that life is a probationary state and full of challenges that we need to overcome so that we may again return to live with our Heavenly Father. I plan to strive for that goal for the remainder of my earthly existence.

My Youth: Geography and Current Events

I remember hearing my father saying in 1960 that there were two new states on "the other side of the world." He was reading from the headlines that stated a 50th star was added to the US flag on July 4, 1960 in honor of Hawaii which attained statehood in 1959. My father was not an active newspaper reader and rarely listened to anything but music on the radio when he had one that actually worked so in hindsight it does not surprise me that he may not have known that for one year the us had a 49 star flag after the inclusion of Alaska. I do remember that I was almost 4 years old and that we had recently moved to the Brooklyn Homes low income housing project in the Brooklyn Park neighborhood of Baltimore. I must have been a real pain on my parents to find out where the two new states of Alaska and Hawaii were because I believe it was for the 4th birthday I received a 50-piece puzzle map of the United States. This was not a cardboard map like they make today. This was a heavy, wooden map. I loved it. I got to know where every state was in relation to every other state. My interest in maps and geography was ignited then and there. To this day I prefer a real map over a computerized gadget. There is nothing like opening a map and examining it in detail. I still like to know how where I have been and where I am going looks on a map.

This interest in cartographic geography also spawned my interest in current events. The first real news items I recall hearing about in detail was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. This happened at a time when we actually had a working television set. Usually my father had several of them disassembled around the house. It was rare when one actually worked. I remember watching JFK's funeral procession through the streets of Washington, DC. Until then I had no idea what a president was. I became interested in what was happening in the world. I remember the air raid drills in school and expecting the Russians to come over and bomb Baltimore any day. Even at a young age I knew that ducking under our crappy desks wasn't going to give anyone much protection especially against a nuclear attack, but I played along and ducked under the desks anyway. Then I heard of Vietnam and asked where it was. Adults back then simply told kids, "It's on the other side of the world," as if that was supposed to make us feel safe or less threatened. I never accepted that answer. I always wanted to know exactly where a place was and why was a war being fought there. Vietnam, I was told, was being fought to "prevent the Russians from taking over the world." Why would the Russians want to take over the world? I was told to spread the evil of communism. Of course I learned later that it was a struggle of ideals that made it the Cold War. To this day I am still very anti-communist.

When I was 10 I started reading the US News & World Report every week. I would ask my grandmother question after question about what I was reading. When I was 14 she got me a subscription to the magazine. During my senior year of high school I started reading Time since it was the textbook of my POTC (Problems of the Twentieth Century) class.

POTC. That class taught me a lot. The entire first half of the school year was a lesson in civics and the US Constitution. The second half of the year involved reading Time Magazine. We were tested ever week on the hard news content of the magazine. We also had to know our "place geography," something that I excelled at. At one time the teacher, James Walsh, asked about the Danube River. Most people in the class knew that it is a major waterway in Eastern Europe. I stated that it's delta was in the Dobrudja, a coastal area of Romania and Bulgaria on the Black Sea. I had had Mr. Walsh the previous year for European history and he drilled that into our heads. There were two or three of us from that class taking POTC as seniors and I think he was surprised that any of us remembered that geologic fact.

Since then I have maintained a strong interest in maps, current events and place geography. I think it is very important to be geographically literate in this day and age. To be lost in a rapidly changing world is not something I would be comfortable in.

I have been contemplating...

I have had several requests that I begin including some of my life's story in my blogs. That is something I have been giving some serious thought to, but have not yet made up my mind as to just how much to share with the world. My basic info is out there for the world to see. To wit: Widowed. Male. Born and raised in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area. A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1978. Presently living outside of Hurlock, Maryland. Just looking at this tells me that I have a lot that I can fill in. But how? In what format? Chronological or random topic? I need to make certain decisions before becoming too wrapped up in this. What do you think? I do know this: That anything I write will not be a juicy "tell-all." It may not always be G rated, but I doubt that it would ever be worse than PG. I grew up in Baltimore. As a child we lived in several different neighborhoods of which I remember certain ones very well and others not at all. I remember instances when as a two year old I got my tricycle stuck on a curb and couldn't get it off. I remember looking at that curb as a 13 year old and being amazed that it was so difficult. I remember being bullied in school to the point that I would walk several miles out of my way so I would not have to ride the transit bus with my schoolmates. I walked several miles to a parallel route instead. I remember leaving home when I was 14 and living at the Baptist Home for Children in Bethesda, Maryland, until I graduated high school in 1975. I remember the summer of 1975 when I was suffering at Fort Dix, New Jersey for 10 weeks. That had a lot of good and bad memories. It also helped to toughen me up (as I discovered later in life.) Yes, there is a lot I can write about in my life. I could easily continue the outline I started here. I will be elaborate on those things, and others as time goes by. Very few people know more than a sketchy outline of who I am. maybe it is time to open up and share some of the things that have helped mold me into the person I am today.

IRS, NSA, and the Stasi

The recent revelations about the IRS targeting groups that do not agree with the politics of the Obama Administration was bad enough. Now we learn that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been targeting all telephone records and internet usage metadata above and beyond what the Patriot Act was intended. To me this is a bit reminiscent of the old East German Stasi, a secret police network that relied on almost everyone spying on everyone else. Not even the mail was safe. Possibly the best film on the Stasi and their methods was Das Leben der Anderen aka The Lives of Others. It is an excellent film from 2006. It shows very realistically the intrusion of government into the personal lives of its citizens. Their thoughts and activities are monitored. Is this what we want in this country? I should hope not. The NSA has a specific charge to collect intelligence from our enemies. Much as the CIA it has, or should have, ZERO domestic surveillance activity. The IRS also needs to be monitored and procedures put into place so that all applications for anything are to be processed within 30 days. Only on rare exceptions should an application take longer than 30 days to be acted upon. I believe strongly that if there are not enough employees to do the job then managers and even executives should roll up their sleeves and assist. Cancel meetings. Eliminate layers of management. Just think of the savings of tax dollars if the federal bureaucracy eliminated even one third of its management. That is a possible theme of another blog. Back to my point. We do not need a stasi (a collection of secretive government intelligence agencies) snooping on what we do on the internet, who we email, and with whom we communicate with on the phone. Hopefully Senator Rand Paul's idea of a class action suit against the NSA and Obama Administration will take root and the Supreme Court will eventually decide that the NSA has exceeded its bounds and order the illegally obtained records to be destroyed.

Oh the Misery...aka Hot and Yucky

Several times a week I walk the three plus miles (5 km) to my local library in Hurlock, Maryland. Usually it is a nice walk and the library itself, while being somewhat inadequate as a library, is fairly comfortable. This does not apply on hot and humid days such as today. I write this from Computer #5 at the library. It is my preferred computer there. It has a temperament that I don't get frustrated with. Eleven computers and they all have different personalities. All of the library regulars have their preferred computers for just this reason. It is hot and muggy outside. It feels worse than the 79 degrees that the thermostat claims at 10:36 am. The humidity alone must be close to 90%. I really do miss Utah and the Intermountain West on days like this. When I arrived at the library this morning there was a sign on the door stating that the library was closing 4 hours early today (at 2 pm) because of an air conditioning system that is not working. If the air conditioning had been working and broke down either yesterday or today that would be fine. the fact is that this building's air conditioning has been intermittent at best for at least the past year. Library management has known about it and yet seems to do nothing more than patch the problem. Yes, I know that air conditioning systems cost money, but wouldn't the wise investment have been to invest in a new or upgraded system during the winter so patrons and staff would not have to suffer during the summer? Wouldn't it have cost less to have had the system maintained during the off season? You may ask what about the Town of Hurlock? Good question. The library is not actually a part of the town nor is it a part of Dorchester County. It is something of a step-child they all claim when convenient and deny having responsibility for when something goes wrong. The library, much like the US Postal Service, is a non-governmental service that is required to be there.

Scandals, scandals, scandals...

Where do I begin? There are multiple scandals being investigated while others are being pushed under the rug. Benghazi,the media, and the IRS scandals are all fairly well documented. One that is not so well known is the incompetence at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Maybe I am not looking in the right places, but, as usual, if it wasn't for Fox News very little would be known about the VA's inability to adequately process applications for benefits our veterans so richly deserve. The VA's backlog is currently close to 600,000 applications. I am sorry, but for the backlog to quadruple in just four years is unconscionable. Yes, I know that the Obama Administration made it easier for veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to apply for benefits but what there is no excuse for is for the VA to still be processing applications as if it was in the post-World War II era. The fist thing VA Secretary Eric Shinseki should have done was to implement a technological upgrade of the department. President Obama, who may be an abuser of the Executive Order (I have not investigated this), could easily have issued one directing the General Services Administration (GSA) to upgrade all VA computers in less than 180 days. Another excuse given for the delay in processing veteran applications is that the Department of Defense and the VA do not communicate well with each other. Apparently it takes a very long time for medical records to travel between the two departments. Why can't veterans' records be stored in a central location so that both the DoD and VA can access them as needed? DoD needs to have effective procedures in place so that upon discharge the records are readily available to the VA. If need be the Secretary Shinseki of the VA and Defense Secretary Hagel should lock themselves in a room, with no aides, until they have a way to fix the problems. These two Cabinet members need to be working closely together. It should never take two years for our veterans to receive the benefits due them.

An Introduction

Welcome to my blog, Contemporary Musings. This is where I will attempt to comment on things that are going on in the world that interest me. My tastes are varied and broad. They will sometimes upset conservative, liberals, libertarians, independents and just about anyone else, but these are my feelings of which I make no apology for. Over the course of my blogs I may comment on such things and politics, foreign affairs, religion, society, and just about anything else that crosses my mind that I want to make a comment on. Sometimes my blogs will be short and pithy. Sometimes they may seem to be extremely long winded. I hope that my readers will freely comment and spread the word about this blog. I will start blogging regularly after the Memorial Day holiday. I am certain that I will have things to say about the current scandals in Washington, about the partisan bickering that prevents things from being accomplished as well as many other topics. In my blogs you will learn things about me that may help you understand where I am coming from or where I am not coming from. I am looking forward to sharing my thoughts. Please do not be shy in sharing my blog with others. I am a believer in the free flow of ideas, both liberal and conservative. Only by actively listening to the other side can you even begin to seek the common ground.