It’s About Making Babies!

Wow. Procrastination sure seems to be a simple form of self-sustaining lifestyle .. This question was asked a WEEK AGO. Booking Through Thursday asked - Format:

All other things (like price and storage space) being equal, given a choice in a perfect world, would you rather have paperbacks in your library? Or hardcovers? And why?

I have to go with hard cover.

I have gotten to an age (past 30 .. ahem) that the (usually) larger print is more comfortable.

Also, the book is larger. The larger size blocks out a larger portion (a bit) of my view, making the story take a slightly larger portion of my view of the world - and a larger portion of my world view, while I am reading. I think it may be easier to immerse myself in the story, with a hard cover book.

I have a couple of books that I have both hard cover and paperback. Elizabeth Moon’s “Once a Hero“, Christopher Stasheff’s “A Company of Stars” are two. I have the following books in hard cover, in these story lines. I picked up the dual formats so I could read the hard cover at home - it just feels better - and the paperback at work. The paperback is easier to read while I am walking to and from my car, or after lunch. Then I just remember the page number where I left off, and sharing the story between two books is a snap!

Dust jacket protectors

Almost 20 years ago I ran into a private book seller, a Mr. Anderson, in Mountain View, CA. He had a plastic protector for all his hardcover books. Since then I have been using the Demco Polyfit covers on all my hardcover dust jackets. Some people confuse my books with library books, from the glossy clear protective appearance.

Polyfit covers come in several sizes - I use mostly the 9″ and 10″. They come in packs of 25 or 50 - Demco changed the minimum order around a couple of times, I don’t recall which is the minimum the last time. They come in a cardboard envelope that makes a great storage container, and a good surface for applying the cover. The Polyfit is a clear band wider than the height of the book with paper borders. To apply, I take the dust jacket off the (brand-spanking new or used) book. I lay the polyfit face down on the cardboard sleeve it came in, lift the paper borders on the back, and lay the dust jacket face down inside the polyfit. I slide the book dustjacket snugly up into the top crease of the polyfit all the way across, this can take a bit of smoothing, but I try not to flatten the creases of the book dust jacket more than I have to, to get the dust jacket snug all the way across the top. It doesn’t matter if the ends of the dust jacket are longer or shorter than the polyfit protector, just be sure to center them with each other. Then I pull the bottom paper boarder up, curling the bottom polyfit crease up over the bottom of the dust jacket, and smooth out the bottom polyfit crease with firm pressure with the back of my thumb nail. I imagine a spoon would also work to smoothly flatten the bottom polyfit crease. I then snug the bottom of the polyfit against the bottom of the dust jacket, taking care not to pull too much and curl the dust jacket, nor to leave any space below the bottom of the dust jacket. I double check that the polyfit now fits the dust jacket all the way from left to right on both bottom and top, and crease the polyfit in place with the back of my thumb or spoon, with firm pressure (one reason the full length cardboard sleeve the Polyfits came in makes a handy place to apply them).

Note that this whole process takes moments to do. Once you do one or two, it is easy to recall the steps to get a really sharp, really protective, attractive, water proof, wear resistant cover that protects the book as well as the dust jacket.

Next I lay the book, right side up with respect to the dust cover. I line up the spine of the book the center of the polyfit/dust cover, the original dust cover creases make this easy. Then I fold the end flaps of the dust cover/polyfit back around the book. Almost done. I life the cover of the book (doesn’t matter front or back cover), and gently semi-crease the dust cover/polyfit where the original dust cover crease was, and wrap the dust jacket/polyfit back around the book cover. Turn the book over. Next I repeat the end fitting crease on the opposite cover - but I crease it just a tad snuggly, to assure a snug fit to the book, without pulling the covers or stressing the book binding. Re-wrap the dust jacket/polyfit on this cover, too. Then I hold the book face up, and run my thumb (not thumbnail) down the binding depression next to the spine, and repeat on the back.

With a bit of practice the fit is snug, sturdy, and looks quite professional. And doesn’t need tape or glue or anything to keep the dust cover in place while reading - it is actually a bit easier to manage with the polyfit that before you protect the dust jacket.

Demco sells polyfit sheets in 8″, 9″, 9 1/2″, 10″, 12″, 14″, and 16″ sizes, 50 sheets to a box or boxes of 500 or 300′ rolls - their main business is library supplies, fixtures, and materials. Search for ‘polyfit’. Demco is a stable, long standing and reputable company I have been buying Poly-Fit covers from them since about 1987 - and none have yellowed or torn yet.

Words - how they relate to each other, to the world around us, and how they symbolize a thing, a motion, and often a culture and stream of history. Just feeling a bit poesy today.

Fly. This can mean the class of insects including the fruit fly, the common housefly, the horse fly, blue bottle fly, etc. I was reading “Plan B”. Anthora (the dramliza or wizard) reached out, and the comb lying three feet away flew to her hand. Flew. Plan B is the ‘culmination’ of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s sequence of novels beginning with “Agent of Change”.

But fly. For Anthor, “Fly” meant ‘traverse the distance through the air or space, unsupported by material object.” In other usage we mean fly in the airplane sense - the peculiar shape of an aircraft member that forces air to pass under in a straight manner with little turbulence, at the same time causing air immediately above the member or ‘wing’ to move in a significantly longer path, necessarily causing the air above the wing to move faster. And produce a reduction of air ‘pressure’. Or ‘lift’, as we say. The difference in air speed below and above the wing cause a difference in pressure that lifts the wing with respect to the direction of air flow (usually parallel to the ground, or ‘up’). We look at the propeller on an airplane, and see that it drags the craft forward, depending on the wing to lift the craft off the ground. Then we look at a helicopter with it’s great blades, and think of them as a form of propeller. Only the helicopter blade isn’t flat like a propeller might be. A helicopter blade is a form of wing, creating lift, which is why helicopters are properly called ‘rotary winged aircraft’.

In one way, I see an airplane wing, interacting with the air, as a material support, so I might find a discussion of whether airplanes really fly, in the semantic sense, to be interesting. Throw a baseball, and air or no air flow, the ball proceeds until it stops. A bullet once fired, an arrow released at the bow, move from here to there irrespective of the nature of the environment - whether air or water or the high energy, low pressure of space in the solar system, or the true emptiness of inter-galactic void (I would guess).

Back to fly. Today I fly, yesterday I flew. When we describe air movement about the wing we talk of flow. Flow is a procession of media or objects. We speak of turbulence and eddies to describe disturbances of flow. We used valves to control flow in and out of pipes. Air flows above and below the wing, the longer path and higher speed above the wing creates lift. The wing is designed to create as little disturbance or turbulence as possible, for simple flight. For special reasons, a certain amount of turbulence is created, such as for low speed flight during takeoff and landing, or to cause the aircraft to turn (flaps and ailerons). Flow, Flew.

Flaw. Unwanted turbulence in flow, a defect, a part that has been worn or stressed beyond normal usage to cause an item to be less than it should be. A cut power cord, a nick or mar on furniture or wall.

Flux. The word that gave us today’s ‘flu’. A description of change over a period of time. The global climate is in flux (apparently always has been, I don’t see all the panic about it changing now..). Also apparently a historical novel reference to diarrhea, a common flu symptom. Flux

Flame, flare, flew, flow, flaw, flux. Fly.

Have a nice FL day!