I need to start thinking about this project a little more strategically: Soon, I’m going to have to blaze a trail into the interior to see what’s there. The wall of clutter on the south end of the garage now looks essentially impenetrable — it’s a Great Wall of Clutter, potentially visible from space if the roof of the garage were to disappear. That means any attack into the interior will have to come from the north, and the north end is guarded by boxes full of …

Box 46: Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023

CONTENTS: Books. This box at least has a fairly eclectic selection, including a half-dozen or so runner’s logs, “The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (now 40 years old, but what’s happened of note in rock in the last four decades?), and a little project I edited back at the Missoulian newspaper, back when newspapers were able to pull off this kind of oddball one-shot: a booklet-sized newsprint biography of Mike Mansfield, the legendary U.S. senator from Montana. Jim Ludwick, at the time the Missoulian’s business editor, researched and wrote the whole thing. Somehow Ludwick and I were able to convince the brass that the project was worth pursuing. The biography first ran as a four-part series in the mid-1990s, and reaction was positive enough to justify reprinting the whole thing in booklet form.

DISPOSITION: At least four of these books will make their way to the Little Free Library in the front yard, including two Louise Erdrich novels, “The Beet Queen” and “Tracks,” which I’ve read over the last two years. (I’ve been binging Erdrich novels, an experience I recommend.) “Savage Beauty” is an outstanding biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The lucky person who pulls this out of the Little Free Library can put it on their bookshelf right next to “Red Comet,” the magisterial recent biography of Sylvia Plath.) Paul Auster’s slim novel “City of Glass” will head out there as well. I’ll hang onto Bernstein’s book about language. I’ll donate the other books, except for the running logs, which will quietly be tossed. The cardboard box will be broken down and recycled. I’ll be keeping the Mansfield booklet.