The Nashville sound - argh

There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth earlier this week, as the bad weather in Memphis delayed the "overnight" delivery of the documents I needed, so that they arrived in Bristol about 90 minutes before I needed to account for them to a federal judge.

So, the gang at the office scanned and numbered them, I downloaded the 44 MB to the laptop where I was and burned the files onto a disc and handed it to the other side about 15 minutes before we saw the judge, who agreed to let us come back later in the day after the other side looked them over. Thankfully, we had what proved to be an easygoing bunch on the other side. Then, I drove back five hours in the rain.

That's not a very flattering story, but let's hope that all's well that ends well.

Tales from the Book Snake

As referenced here previously, my wife's Uncle David wrote a book about his life in book collecting, called Memoirs of a Book Snake: Forty Years of Seeking and Saving Old Books. The term "book snake" was a malapropism from the wife of one of his book and magic friends, who was attempting the term "book worm." (The book and magic guy was Jay Marshall, profiled here.)

Now, the in-laws' e-mail hotline is circulating what David has written for the Caxton Club of Chicago, a century-old society of bibliophiles, about the book snaking of his father and grandfather, my wife's grandfather and great-grandfather, which are the first seven pages of this edition of the Journal of the Caxton Club.

The late Judge Dalton

There is now a tolerable Wikipedia page for Ted Dalton, besides 14 other past judges of the Western District of Virginia.