The Diary - October 10
The Diary
October 10, 2026
It was a fairly quiet week in the Reading Room. The Illinois Library Association was in town from the 6th to the 8th for its annual conference. A number of librarians found the store. I did not know they were in town until Elliot at CxT Coffee mentioned it while I was ordering my morning coffee. I will need to mark my calendar for the 2028 convention so I can proactively court this crowd!
They were a delightful bunch, young and enthusiastic, working in libraries across our great state. They took their time perusing the collection, openly delighting in new titles and old favorites. They chatted about what they were buying and why. Their interests were eclectic. One bought a slew of classic science fiction tomes I had cloistered in the storeroom. Another opted for a book on container gardening. One librarian entered the store and told me that my cousin John in Seattle had sent her! Her parents in Edwardsville were close friends of my cousin when he edited the Edwardsville Intelligencer. When John heard she was in Peoria for the conference, he recommended a visit to my bookstore. We had a delightful visit.
There were other delightful encounters as well. One customer turned out to be my neighbor on Cooper Street in Peoria. The evening before, I had complimented her husband on his garden as I headed out for an evening stroll on Moss Avenue. I had no idea then that I would meet his wife in the shop the next day. As she purchased her volumes, we chatted about the neighborhood, our love of small cozy houses, and our wishes for the city. She confided that her husband had mentioned my greeting when he came in from gardening the night before. It felt like the warm closing of a community circle.
Late Friday, a regular came in with her daughter. She had ordered a book for her daughter, unbeknownst to the daughter. When I pulled the book out of the order box, her daughter gasped in surprise and collapsed in her mother’s arm. The smile on the mother’s face was the brightest light in the shop. The daughter had been searching for the book for a while, and now she had it. The mom also bought her daughter American Primitive, a collection of poems by Mary Oliver, which caught her attention when she entered the shop.
I’ll end here with Mary Oliver’s “Fall Song.”
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadow, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this Now, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries--- roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time’s measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay--- how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.