The Shore in August

Stone Harbor is a funny place at the end of August. It’s still technically summer and the weather is great, but most of the crowds have vanished. As in, the place is deserted. The hordes are gone because the school year starts in August these days, not after Labor Day as I recall from my childhood. Families with kids make up a significant part of the Stone Harbor customer base. Since I’m not that big on seas of vacationers, it’s a great time to hang out at the Jersey shore.

For starters, there isn’t a better time to visit any of the many roadside stands selling locally grown produce. Most of the stands are quaint without being cute, and even the cute ones aren’t that cute, presumably to the dismay of the Cape May County Visitors’ Bureau. The produce, however, is top notch, and as you load up your bag with seed catalog illustration worthy Jersey corn and tomatoes, you understand how The Garden State got its name.

All the shops and restaurants in Stone Harbor are still open, but stores now have sales as they try to move that merch that no one snapped up over the summer.  So, if you need to load up on beach-related tchotchkes, now is the time to do it--there are plenty of things to choose from. Fudge Boy and his co-worker, Fudge Girl, the product samplers at The Fudge Kitchen are still passing out fudge outside the shop, but I feel kinda bad for them as they don’t get to talk about the rich creamy fudge and the salt water taffy special to nearly as many people as they do in height of the summer tourist season.  

Even the Wells Fargo Presbyterian Church, I mean the Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church, in Avalon, is low on customers. (There’s always the possibility that between my visits they may have all have gone on to their heavenly reward. They’re at that age, you know.)  Fortunately this weekend the church had the Haverford School Notables in town to make a joyful clean-cut Ralph Lauren-ish a capella noise to the Lord. Not only did they look and sound super, but since there were eighteen of them, they took up lots of space in the tiny church. Even though it was their first outing of the school year, they had the stage presence of organist emeritus Betty Ewart— recently retired after 50 years at the not-so-mighty Wurlitzer.

Tuesday morning my friend Martha and I took a long walk on the beach. No, we did not discuss our mutual love of Frank Sinatra, Vermont during the leaf-peeping season, freshly made gazpacho, classic cars, or anything else that either of us had once put in a personal ad. Taking the sea air seemed like a good idea because the previous night we were in a hard fought—go ahead, call it a slugfest—Quizzo match at Fred’s Tavern, the local watering hole of choice.

Yes, team Writers’ Block was the victor in four rounds of bar trivia covering Science, History, Current Events, and Spelling. We didn’t win in a walk, because even with a nurse and an author on our team we couldn’t spell the word “inoculate” and my priceless cultural heritage did not include knowing—after a couple of drinks—where the Trail of Tears started. (“Right after that first swig of tequila” was not the right answer.) We celebrated our victory in the contest by spending the $50 Fred’s gift certificate on a festive round for the team (yours truly, Martha, Chris, Sharif, and Bill). As fun as it was the night before, that celebratory round didn’t feel like such a good idea the next morning.

So, in lieu of hair of the dog, we embarked on a restorative regime of moderate exercise, sunshine, and salt air.

The beach is deserted early in the morning. There are a few folks exercising in earnest, a barefoot runner here and there, and some people walking as they yammer into phones.

(In a thick Philadelphia accent)

Gary, stop at WaWa and get some wooter. 

Listen to me. 

Gaaarrrry. Lisssen. 

You’re not lissening. 

Stop at the stinkin’ WaWa and get some wooter. 

Clearly Gary has hydration issues.

Life guards and beach tag inspectors start working at 10:00 and even then, they don’t have many people to watch over.

Most of the guards are guys, though there are a few especially sturdy female lifeguards. The guys seem to be into making sure that we members of the public see how fit they are. When they’re not pushing their obviously heavy lifesaving boat to the water’s edge, they’re doing sit-ups next to the lifeguard chair, running from one lifeguard station to the next, or doing curls with the big logs that serve alternately as rollers and chocks for the their boats. I didn’t stick around long enough to see the caber toss, but I’m sure that’s someplace in the daily fitness performance.

With bodies made taut by exercise, deep tans, and wind-tousled, sun-bleached, hair, the guys occupy that nether region between models that specialize in mid-priced homo-centric underwear and full-on Bruce Weber make love to the camera Abercrombie & Fitch guys slash gay porn actors. In a state not known for its eye candy (Gov. Chris Christie in a fleece. I rest my case.), they’re a bright spot.

Uniforms wise, the male guards wear navy (with red trim) board shorts. I keep hoping that the Chamber of Commerce will point out to the Stone Harbor Beach Patrol that it’s time ditch the retardataire swim togs and go with something that reveals just a tad more in the leg department. The suits the female guards wear don’t leave much to the imagination, so it’s not as if management doesn’t know that sex sells, even when it comes to beach safety.

Our stroll took us across Nun’s Beach and past Villa Maria by-the-Sea. Stone Harbor-ians are as proud of our vacationing nuns as people in California are of their redwoods. Unfortunately, on this day, there were no nuns out doing Habit Hiney Camp or even the Canadian Air Force/Little Sisters With a Place at the Beach calisthenics. I know that nuns are practically on the endangered species list so I especially enjoy seeing one of the old girls out taking a break from doing God’s work, lollygagging at water’s edge, with a beach tag pinned to her outfit. 

After we passed the end of the guarded and manicured beach, where people store their Hobie Cats, we decided we’d go the rest of the way to the tip of the island, technically forever and a day away. In the far distance we could see a person with some sort of tripod. I suggested to Martha the person might be doing plein air painting.  But when we got closer, it became apparent that it was a young woman with a small telescope and a notebook. She was dressed in shorts, a light blue polo, and Teva sandals for that rugged outdoor girl look. We smiled and kept on walking. She seemed to be observing the water birds.

After we were finally (and I do mean finally) on our way back from the tip of the island, we came upon tripod woman again. This time she was taking photos with her phone. She was facing away from the water and taking pictures of something mounted on fence post. It sure looked like a naked Ken doll. A naked, headless, Ken doll. OK, we had to ask.

 “Hi. Say, are you an artist or something?”

(Who else would take photos of what looked like a naked, headless, Ken doll?)

No, actually I work for the New Jersey Department of Fish and Wildlife. I’m here photographing birds. My boss collects photos of creepy toys that wash up on the beach. I thought I’d send this to him.

Good choice, we all agreed.

I thought to myself, you know, in Rehoboth, this would have been a Billy doll. Then again, perhaps this was Earring Magic Ken and he just well, made some bad choices. In addition to that lavender vest and the time with G.I. Joe in the men's room at The Renegade, I mean.

Great hobby I thought, but really how many creepy toys wash up on the beach? Everyone knows that New Jersey is the place where medical waste washes up on its shores.

When she’s not photographing creepy toys that was up on the beach, our photographer friend is some sort of scientist with the NJ Department of Fish and Wildlife. She was checking on the local birds and took the time to explain to us the difference between the Piping Plover (super rare) and the Semi-Palmated Plover (not so rare) and the plentiful Sanderling.

She also said that the harvest of creepy toys is way down this year, perhaps do to Superstorm Sandy. (In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.) It seems counterintuitive, since with all the stuff that washed out to sea from North Jersey, you’d think that there would be more than an occasional Chatty Cathy wrapped up in fishing line, or the less plentiful Barbie’s Corvette (Jayne Mansfield autograph model) smashed into a rusty Tonka Truck.

Contemplating the shortage of creepy toys on New Jersey beaches, Martha and I walked back home. This time we walked through town where we took the jiffy tour of the ancient lifesaving station, saw some bad tattoos, picked up a flyer for a condo, and said thanks-but-no-thanks to girl passing out samples at the Fudge Kitchen. However, if she’d been promoting a special where you got a free photo of a creepy toy that had washed up on the beach along with that pound of rich, creamy fudge, I just might have bought some.

Fleet-ing Thoughts

I saw this truck in downtown State College the other day and it brought back memories. And as you can see, it was even photo-worthy.  It's the word "Fleet" rather than the flame logo coming out of the gas cap that I find so amusing. (Note to FleetConversions.com...do you really think that's a good idea?)

In perhaps 1994 or 1995, I was flying to San Francisco to play tourist and visit some friends. While 1994 wasn’t the “Golden Age of Air Travel” when everyone had matching luggage, airlines served gourmet meals, and cocktails and smoking on the plane were practically mandatory, it was still a far cry from the post 9/11 flying experience. Security was an annoyance but not particularly invasive, and sitting by an empty seat wasn’t even noteworthy. Flight attendants might have even been friendlier then—they certainly weren’t as harried and hassled as they are today.

So there I was, in the mostly empty back of the plane, with a row of seats to myself. There was one guy in the row ahead of me. I’d noticed him when we boarded: great hair, nice looking, well dressed, in shape, about my age. While it isn’t a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good haircut on a flight to San Francisco is in no way, shape, or form in want of a wife, it was my guess that he was gay. 

In the middle of the flight, after what passed for a meal service, the flight attendant came by and engaged both of us in conversation. It was rather a neat trick since Mr. Great Haircut and I had to talk through that gap created when one airline seat is reclined and the one next to it is fully upright.  There was no need for gaydar when it came to the flight attendant. He had the volume up to 11, as they say in Spinal Tap. He was toting an open bottle of champagne (leftover from the first class cabin, he noted) and offered us free glasses. The flight attendant also told me that I should move up a row to sit in one of the empty seats by the guy with great hair since it would make conversation much easier.

It turns out that Mr. Great Haircut was an off-duty flight attendant---hence the free leftover champagne; it was a professional courtesy. Definitely not in want of a wife, he gave good chat as long as you didn't get too near testosterone-soaked he-man type topics like football and baseball. While he was no threat to the Jeopardy Tournament of Champions, he was cheerful company on a transcontinental flight. 

At some point I said, “You know, it’s Fleet Week in San Francisco.” 

And then, putting my nerd bona fides right out there on the non-upright and unlocked tray table, I added “I read it in their Visitors’ Guide.” 

“Fleet Week?” he replied, clearly not knowing what I was talking about. 

“It’s when the U.S. Navy puts on a show and navies of other countries drop by. They show the flag, and build goodwill. It's hands across the sea and all that.”   

And then, going for the low-hanging conversational fruit, I added, “You know, there’s something about a man in uniform.”

He paused.

I'd say it was a long pause, but single guys on flights to San Francisco are prone to misjudging the length of things. So let me just say that it felt like a long pause.

“Oh. That kind of Fleet Week!” he said.  “I thought it had something to do with the brand of enema. We are going to San Francisco after all.”

I had to admit, he had a good point. 

This is an actual World War 1 U.S. Navy Recruiting Poster. Seriously.

I haven’t been back to San Francisco in eons, but when I do, I’m definitely consulting its visitors’ guide, just to see if it’s Fleet Week. You know, there’s something about a man in uniform. Even when he's an off-duty flight attendant.

The Christmas Tree Capital of the World

I don’t know about you, but one way I spell fun is to go to a conference in Indiana, PA, a town that bills itself as the Christmas Tree Capital of the World. While I saw the sign that made that very claim, I didn’t see a single Christmas tree farm. I saw lots of dairy farms, and some beef cattle here and there, but not a single Christmas tree farm. On the other hand, I didn’t see a holiday tree farm, or even a menorah farm, so there was no sign of a vast left-wing conspiracy to take the Christ out of Christrmas Tree Farm.

I’m not sure which came first, Indiana, Pennsylvania or the State of Indiana, but as a Central Pennsylvanian I often have a nanosecond of confusion when someone mentions Indiana and I have to figure out which one they’re talking about without looking like I’m trying to figure that out. Yes, I’m a doofus.

In addition to the business about Christmas Trees, Indiana is known for being the hometown of Jimmy Stewart. There’s even a small museum devoted to the star in downtown Indiana—across the street from the site of the hardware store that his family owned. The museum is a bit hokey, but charming, too, and is definitely a must-do if you’re in Indiana. While the Stewart family seems to support it, don’t go there look for his Best Actor Academy Award for Philadelphia Story—it’s someplace else.

But there are plenty of interesting items—for example, the script for Harvey and the front door from his now demolished house in Beverly Hills. There are also lots of things like the stuff that I have from my grandfather: kitschy knicknacks, his high school diploma, business papers, and awards from various service clubs.

His office has been recreated, and there’s also a booth from Chasen’s, the favorite L.A. eatery of the stars of the Jimmy Stewart era. Had this been the Bryant family museum, it would have been the booth from The Corner Room where my sister barfed when she was a kid.

My meeting was held at IUP, formally known as Indiana University of Pennsylvania. There is no relation in the slightest to the No Descriptor Needed University of Pennsylvania. My grandfather was a member of IUP’s Class of 1916. He grew up on a farm (dairy, not Christmas tree or even menorah) near Indiana and lost his leg in a farming accident when he was a small child. Since he used a wooden leg, I mean, prosthetic device, he was unsuitable for farm chores, he went to college to make something of himself.

IUP seemed to have a handsome campus even though more often than not I thought I felt as if I was entering any building I went to via the back door. Fisher Auditorium was particularly nice—it’s sort of a Georgian chapel (less the steeple) from the front while the interior is Art Deco movie house. I suppose that makes it an architectural mullet—all business up front and party in the rear.

The conference was the annual hoedown for presenting organizations in Pennsylvania. Although there are some nice people in the group, it can be pretty dreadful—you try sitting next to a pit bull-like agent pitching a tenor slash airline gate agent from Long Island at lunch. This year I had the good fortune of running into an agent for a band I’d booked last year. We’d only met on the phone and so it was a pleasant surprise when he introduced himself. He was bright and funny and didn't look at all like the person I imagined him to be, not that I had a clear picture in my head.

Our conference’s main luncheon was in what seemed to be the central administration building—though I’m not entirely sure what it was, since I went in the back door. The room was decorated with patriotic and neo-classical plaster reliefs. Presumably they were thought to be educational and uplifting to students of my grandfather's era. I think I was the only person in a room of 100 or so to take much interest in them.

The luncheon speaker was John Astin. Yes, Gomez Addams. He’s alive! I think he went to IUP with my grandfather. Actually, he wasn’t that old, just almost, and really, looks pretty good for someone I thought was dead. His luncheon speech was long and he didn’t mention The Addams Family or Patty Duke once. The highlight of the lunch was when someone’s phone went off and they couldn’t figure out how to stop it. Even John Astin stopped talking and asked what was going on as the embarrassed perp tried to beat the offending phone into submission.

Lots of the conference is devoted to showcases—brief (15 minute)— performances that are intended to entice presenters, like me, to book the performer. In a way it’s like an audition. There were some great showcases and then well, there were the not-so-good showcases.

One guy played little whistles and looped the tunes he created. Pretty soon it sounded the Nature Company Store at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in 1984. He clearly did not know the meaning of the technical term “15 minutes”. Had they not turned up the house lights, I think he’d still be there enjoying his own company. There were also some semi-leaden dancers, of the Ukrainian and modern variety. Not my thing. How could I forget the chamber music group that sounded as if they’d handed each player music for a different number? I’ll pass thanks. There was also a glitzy country-classical family group that sounded OK if you like that sort of PBS telethon act. My guess was that they practiced so much that they were left with no time to ask that important question, “Which is worse, my dress or my hair?” I’m sure they’ll be quite successful, but they weren’t really a fit for CPFA.

There were some unexpectedly good showcases, too. If you can blow a balloon up with a leaf blower, and then crawl inside the balloon, and act like the monster from Alien, I promise I’ll laugh. Some acts I’d booked in the last year or two were there showcasing. The fact that those acts were both talented and professional made me feel smart for having brought them to the Arts Festival.

After enduring leaden dancers long enough on the last night of the conference, my friend Patrick the agent and I decided to stop in at the hotel bar. It wasn’t very crowded at first—apparently my professional colleagues like bad dance more than I do. We were shooting the breeze and having a few chuckles with the guy a few empty stools away when the subject of mooning people came up. Patrick and I both admitted to having mooned people at least once in our lives. I asked Ashlee, the friendly bartender, if she’d ever mooned anyone.

“Oh yeah, lots of times”, she said casually, as if I’d asked her if she’d ever gotten a parking ticket. She proceeded to share the story of how she repeatedly mooned her grandmother in a nursing home, exposing not only her not insubstantial ass, but also her tattoo.

"What's your tattoo", I asked, expecting her to say, the Steelers logo, or perhaps Wilma Flintstone.

 “What’s that little angel with wings called?”

 “You mean a cherub?”

 "Yeah, that’s it!”

Ashlee told us that her grandmother loved it when Ashlee dropped trou and bent over right there in The Home. I have no doubt that it was some sort of religious experience. Bernadette of Lourdes sees the Virgin Mary; a woman in a Pennsylvania nursing home sees a cherub tattooed on her granddaughter’s ass. I suppose that comes under the heading of "God speaks to us in different ways."

A key part of Ashlee’s mooning ritual was the fact that the cherub was a little worse for wear since when Ashlee “went tanning” she neglected to put “that stuff” on him. I wasn’t exactly sure what “that stuff” was (asbestos? duct tape?) or what could have possibly happened to the little (OK, probably kinda big) guy, but I’m hoping that he’ll get some medical attention once Obamacare goes into effect.

On my way home from the conference, I tried to find the farm where my grandfather, Harry Nehrig, grew up, and where I had to endure a couple of Nehrig family reunions when I was a small child. I tried to look it up online, and found a web page that said that the farm had been in the same family for seven generations. While my grandfather the family patriarch loved going to the reunion, and having his children and grandchildren there, an afternoon on the farm eating congealed salads in the company of my rural relations was not for me.

I found Nehrig Road but that was it. There was a ranch house right there with a big rock in the front yard that said it was the Nehrigs.

My only photos of the Nehrig Reunion...c.1952, when I was not yet even a gleam in my parents' eyes.

I thought about stopping and introduce myself, and showing them my family tree and vintage reunion photos, and asking where the farm I barely remembered was--it had to be around there someplace. In the end, I decided that long-lost distant relatives would have to wait, that whatever lore they might share could never compete with the story of a woman who mooned her grandmother in a nursing home.

Book 'em, Betty. Murder Mysteries One.

One of the annual Rites of Spring in State College is the annual AAUW Used Book Sale. In our post-modern, sustainability-infused world, it’s the love child of Match.com and a recycling extravaganza where our old books go to meet new bookworms. In the process, the local chapter of AAUW raises a tidy sum to support its good works, of which, all kidding aside, there are quite a slew.

 

The AAUW (American Association of University Women) is an old fashioned women’s club. Well, not exactly. I am not sure that they play bridge, eat triangular tea sandwiches from which the bread crusts have been trimmed, and talk about genealogy. I mean, when would they have time? The book sale requires endless hours upon hours of work. But really, if they wanted to throw back a few in search of the perfect Old-Fashioned, no one would blame them. All those books can make a girl thirsty.  (Bess Truman's recipe for an Old-Fashioned: bourbon and ice. That's it. Skip all the fluff.)

What is old fashioned is the annual used book sale itself. Books? They're so last century. And the one before that. And the one before that. Well, you get the idea. The used book sale has been around since the dawn of time, and fortunately, seems to be holding its own against the Kindles and Brand X e-readers of this world.

The women of AAUW accept donations of books from anyone who can open a large plastic bin and put a book or even a box of books in it.  The AAUW-ers then price and review the donations and make sure that there’s not a hidden treasure map stuck between the leaves of a book no one has opened in forever. They recycle some books right away—they don’t think there’s much of a market at the sale for the 89th copy of the Fifty Shades of Gray.  They keep the decent books (and trust me, they have catholic tastes when it comes to decent) and then sort them according to category of subject matter. At the end of the intake process, the books are put into specially marked heavy-duty fruit and veg boxes that they’ve been saving for years.

Two days before the sale, the event committee arranges for a small army of volunteers and a fleet (OK, five or six) trucks to transport the books from the AAUW warehouse to Penn State’s Snider Agricultural Arena, several miles away. A crew of manly men at the warehouse location loads trucks, and then another crew of volunteers unloads trucks at the Snider Ag arena. I’m on the unloading crew.

 

The sawdust floor of the arena—where livestock usually trots around and so on—is covered with black Tyvek-like fabric. The arena is then filled with a sea of identical sturdy tables. Each table is reserved for a specific subject matter—the more popular subjects get more tables.

It takes about five hours to fill the arena with books.

Over five or so hours, my fellow volunteers and I unload trucks and gradually fill all the tables with books, toting each box to the table reserved for that subject matter. It's about a kabillion books by my math. Four-thousand and some odd fruit boxes of books weigh about what you think four-thousand and some odd fruit boxes of books would weigh: a lot. I work up a sweat. It’s hard work for an old geezer like me.

The women of AAUW never seem to get beyond a healthy glow as they unload the books from the boxes the volunteers tote to each table. One woman is in charge of less popular genres, such as biographies, while it may take a few to handle more popular areas like children’s books.

Back in the olden days, when I’d just started helping, there were PSU Navy ROTC students on the unloading crew. They were hard workers though they did spend a serious amount of time preening and flexing and trying to attract girls or perhaps boys if they were in a don’t ask/don’t tell situation. Even then, if you asked nicely they’d probably tell you, and perhaps even show off the resulting tattoos, all in the strictest of confidence, of course. 

Today much of the help comes from kids from the local alternative high school. Some of them are good workers, like the boy who carried boxes of books on his head, but others seemed to have cut the class about the Meaning of Work. They show up in flip flops and muumuus and aren’t really there to work, but instead come hang out with other kids in flip flops and muumuus and collect the community service hours necessary to earn a State High diploma. I’m sure some of them would be OK with close supervision (as in on a chain gang), but this year, there was no close supervision. Exasperated, I even resorted to exercising my first amendment rights by telling a gaggle of them to cut the tomfoolery and get back to work. Big surprise: it didn’t work.

Unlike the high school kids, some of the women of the AAUW aren’t so young. In fact, I’ve even heard them refer to each other as “old biddies” in a tone not reserved for terms of endearment. It occurred to me that a couple of the women might have dated Guttenburg, as in Johannes not Steve, but  some of them could have done Steve too. After all, according to Steve Guttenberg’s modestly titled autobiography, The Guttenberg Bible, he had plenty of conquests. I would not be surprised that at least one of the AAUW women had a moment with the star of Police Academy where she took off her glasses as she unpinned her bun and shook out her greying but not yet blue tresses. And then, in a voice redolent of Sanka, Dewey Decimal numbers, and an occasional Thursdays-only hit of Milk of Magnesia, purred “Steve, I don’t want you to think of me as just an old biddy from the cookbook section of the AAUW booksale…”

I thought about buying this for my college chum Peggy who used to buy all the books critical of the Kennedys--in hardcover--just to make Rose Kennedy ("Rose Toes, in Peggy-speak) mad.

Most of the women are the life of the party and are glad you’re there helping, even the quiet woman in biographies who always wears headphones as she works and has so far resisted my suggestion to create a special section devoted to Princess Diana. However, there are also women who aren’t very nice. I mean, they’re not exactly mean, but lots of them don’t say thank you and act as if it never would occur to them that the box toters read books, too. Lots of times I’ve walked to a table with a heavy box of books and the woman-in-charge, a who no doubt spent her senior year in high school as a state officer in Future Prison Matrons of America, will point and bark “Just put ‘er there.” When that happens I see her as her  film noir doppelganger who smells faintly of Vat 69, with the ever present cigarette balanced on her lower lip. As she sorts books, her Benson & Hedges menthol bounces up and down with each syllable, its impossibly long ash about to fall onto a well-worn copy of  Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. Before her ash falls, the moment is gone. I chuckle to myself and go back for another box of books.

This year I overheard one of the women correcting someone. “That’s fewer, not less. Use fewer when it’s something you can count”. I shared with her that my mother's pet peeve was using the word "raise" when someone really meant "rear".  I don't think she shared my mother's sense of outrage.

Yes, this book was really written by Dr. A. Willy and "other authorities". I'm assuming one of those authorities is Dick Hertz.

Since I’m partial to history and bio, I asked the volunteers in history what the most unusual book they’d seen. “Something about Napoleon’s Privates. It was pure pornography!” “Oh my!” was all that I could manage as a made a mental note to go back to look for that. Once I found it, of course, I had to buy it. In case you’re wondering, in the index under John Dillinger, it says, "Penis as relic….p. 39”. According to Napoleon's Privates, 2,500 Years of History Unzipped by Tony Perrottet, the story about Dillinger's uh, big weapon, being stored in a shoe box at the FBI isn’t true. Yeah, right.

Once all the books are unloaded volunteers are given about 30 minutes to shop before the arena is locked for the night. Although I’m not typically in the mood for books after carrying so many, I do a jiffy tour through the histories, bios, and art/architecture books to see if there’s anything worthwhile.

Two days later the event opens to the public in a feeding frenzy that makes the Oklahoma Land Rush look like a slow moving line receiving line at Koch Funeral Home. When the sale is over a few days later, the AAUW has done State College a huge service. Lots of great and not so great books have found new homes, high school kids have completed some community service project, and the AAUW has earned a ton of money to fund its good works.  I have some sore muscles, and if I'm lucky, a few books to enjoy know that that some day they may go back to the plastic bins at AAUW where they will start their lives all over again.