MEET-UP AT CASS 124 AVENUE O BROOKLYN NY

For a few years now, for my local Buy Nothing group, I help organize a regularly-scheduled free Swap Meet, or rather Meet-up, a physical event where people meet in the flesh, to give away items or take free items.  The group is fortunate to have the support of the local public library, Ulmer Park Branch of Brooklyn Public Library.  Because most of us work during the week and the library isn't open on Sundays, all the events so far are on Saturdays.  Some members, however, work Saturdays so they could rarely attend the event, unless they take the day off or not feeling well enough to work but can take a break from being out sick.

Through working with staff at Councilman William Colton, I was recently able to find a place that opens on Sunday which agreed to host us.  It's the Chinese American Social Service Center, or CASS, at 124 Avenue O.  It's a smaller place and not local to Bath Beach and Gravesend, but it's not far either.  Hopefully the usual crowd from the Buy Nothing group will attend, especially those who worked Saturdays.  Depends on how things go, maybe we will have it regularly, say, every other month.  We are already doing the library event every other month, CASS can fill in the gap.

Come attend the event!  Donate some portable, clean, unbroken stuff, take some, do both, or do neither, we are flexible.  Even better, come volunteer your time to help sort the donated items, to help keep things tidy, or to load stuff into the St. Mary's Church van that is scheduled for a 3 PMish pickup.

FAUX LFLs AND FOR-REAL ONES

Not too long ago, I discovered the Local feature on LibraryThing.com. You may recall that LibraryThing's primary use is for cataloguing one's book collection.  It has expanded into other areas.  With Local, you get a map of places in your area that offer books, whether for free, at a discount, or at the normal prices.  So you have Little Free Libraries and their kind, thrift stores, and bona fide bookstores, whether big chains or independent ones.  All in one big map!  I love adding the Little Free Libraries that I know about, plus similar places that are not registered with LFL, i.e. no charter number, or those with charter number but no longer listed in the official LFL web site.

It was fun for a while but in the end, I cannot stand the not-so-big map that LibraryThing Local offers.  It takes up about a third of the screen and cannot go full-screen.  It's a lot of zooming in and panning around.  I am taking a break from LibraryThing Local and already re-visited my Google Map called Little Free Libraries Faux and For Real.

I have been to many LFLs and similar places in Brooklyn and Staten Island, some areas in Carteret NJ and nearby townships, too.  However, since I will soon share the map with my local Buy Nothing group, for Bath Beach and Gravesend areas, I am focusing on Brooklyn for now.  There are more Brooklyn places to visit, but I will first finish posting what I already have.  Enjoy!

LFL FAUX AND FOR-REAL

GRAVEND LITTLE LIBRARY

 It is a cold and windy day, the type that one would be better off sitting in bed, covered with a blanket, the heat on, doing something enjoyable like reading a book.  That was my plan, at least to stay indoor as much as possible, but then I happened to look around the Little Free Library app and learned that there is a new one in my neighborhood.  It is called Gravesend Little Library and its charter number is 217085.  Until recently, 20abcd to me is considered new, but now it's 21abcd already.  Nice to see that people are opening new LFL and register them.  I know about dressing in layers but up until today I only do that for the upper body.  Today, I dressed in layers for the lower body, too, to make the short, but cold and windy, walk to Van Sicklen Street and Avenue V.  From the hint in the LFL app, I know it's near Gravesend Cemetery, but I could not find it at first.  Then it almost hit, it's attached to a utility pole!  I love the guerrilla tactic but not sure how long the utility company will allow it.  It was good to see that even though it is new it did have some books.  I added five books and didn't take any.  I signed in via the app too, First Customer, yay!

HAPPY JAR 2026

 At the beginning of 2025, I set out to resume blogging, to go side-by-side with a Happy Jar.  The Jar would have a note, with a few words to jog my memory, each note would be explained in more details on this blog.  Like many New Year Resolutions, it worked well for a few months, then the blog stopped getting updates.  No new notes in the Happy Jar either.  Still, as the year winds down, I see that at least I had 40 posts made in 2025.  That's a big jump from the previous years, whose number of posts were in the single digit.  A new year, a new hope, I will try again in 2026.  There are 52 weeks in a year, hitting 40 isn't such a bad thing.

In other news, I really love LibraryThing.com and expanded its use to my yearbooks collection for my high school, Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens NY.  The collection aims to catalog all the publications that my school produced over its 125+ existence.  Most of the entries are yearbooks, but I have a handful of literary magazines and other club magazines, too.  Take a gander at, change the catalog to that of Newtown Publications.  I love seeing all the covers and many have links in the Comment field to see the inside of the yearbook.

Qaptain Qwerty books on LibraryThing

One thing LibraryThing tells me is that over the years, I already spent over $1,000 on buying yearbooks.  Most are from eBay and Newtown itself, but AbeBooks and Amazon provided some.  A bunch were donations by generous alumni or teachers, thank you so much.  Still, I would like to get some financial support to keep the project going.  I turned to GoFundMe to make it easy for Newtown alumni to contribute to the project.  I already got $225.00 collected out of the initial $800, hope you can help me reach me goal!

Newtown HS Yearbooks Project

JHS 73 CLASS OF 1968

Lately I spend a lot of time with the alumni of Newtown High School of Elmhurst, Queens NY.  I am sure you saw the few posts about the Class of 1985's 40th Reunion, which came and went, with success, whew.  Before Newtown, I went to JHS 73 in Maspeth, Queens NY and I wrote some years ago about my time there.  Maybe it was just proper timing, the post was my most commented on, almost 150!

I recently received via email a link to a YouTube video.  The sender is from Class of 1968, which is almost 15 years before me.  I don't recognize any teachers, but the format of the yearbook is pretty much the same between 1968 and 1982.  Students are shown in group only, with a nickname each student themselves selected.

Enjoy!  Thank you, fantansam!

I NEED MY POPPY FIX

 Life sure is interesting.  I have this book, "The Poppy War" by R.F. Kuang, possibly from a bundle that I picked up from someone who moved away from my neighborhood.  She hated to throw them away and put in a free offer in the NextDoor app.  At least that's what I vaguely recall.  My intention was to re-distribute the books through my local Buy Nothing group or drop them off, a few at a time, at the many Little Free Libraries I visit every now and then.  For some reason, I set "The Poppy War" aside to read.  Maybe because I suspected it's about the Opium War that the West waged with China.  My late father used to commented that China lost the war because each soldier had two guns, one to shoot at the enemy and one to shoot drugs into their body.  Maybe I want to know a little more about China's history.  For months the book sat on a stack near the bed, waiting to be read.  Not long ago I saw some mention of the author R.F. Kuang.  I cannot even remember what the mention was, but it got me into starting to read the book.

At first, it seemed to be a chick lit, i.e. a piece of literature from a woman's point of view.  Not something a regular guy like me would be interested.  But once I start reading something I try much to finish it.  It seems to take place in China, because of the names, but there are other names that don't sound Chinese.  I stuck with it through the first few chapters.  Things got more interesting, some martial arts were involved, before I know it I was bringing it to work to read during lunch-break.  That's always a good sign.  Recently I finished it and discovered that it's merely Book One of a Trilogy.  Argh!  It turned out to be a popular series, Brooklyn Public Library has a long waiting list.  I will wait but I will explore other avenues.  Maybe some Little Free Library out there has it.  I know The Tom Lynch LFL in Staten Island has many books.  Maybe New York Public Library may have it.  NYPL covers Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island.  I commute through S.I. every weekday.  At one time, my Brooklyn library card was linked to NYPL so that I could borrow materials from NYPL.  Time to re-establish that link, assuming the option is still available, it's been a while.

Life is funny, eh?  One day a book was ignored, some time later its sequels are highly sought after.

AMAZING AMAZON DELIVERY, IN A BAD WAY

I used to live in a few places in Queens, NY so I belong to a few Facebook groups for those areas.  One common thread I see regularly involves mis-delivered packages, probably from Amazon since they are such a big deal nowadays.  There would be a photo of the lobby where the package was delivered to, but the recipient of the photo doesn't recognize the place.  I don't know how badly the mistake was made, maybe the street names are similar, maybe the house number was misread and some last digit wasn't seen.  I think in general some delivery people are just sloppy.  Don't give a dang about their job.  Under too much pressure to meet some quota so they just do the least amount of work, sometimes even less.  I once witnessed some UPS guy simply just dropped off the package and didn't ring any doorbell or knock on door.  One guy did yell "UPS", but that is only good if you are right by the door at the time.  The company is to blame, too, always squeezing more and more out of their slave workers.

This week it happened to my brother's package.  Around 6 PM, he was notified by email some package was delivered.  By 7 PM when I came home there was still nothing.  I walked to a few houses near mine, there were a few packages on the neighbors' porches but none had my brother's name.  I even went a block over because a few times I got packages and such meant for a house on that block, same house number.  No luck.  I told my brother to let Amazon know and hopefully they will send another package, no charge.  Strangely, he didn't even get a photo.  Was the delivery guy that lazy?  They told him to wait until 5 PM the next day.

The next day as I went off to work, early before the sun rose, there was a package on our porch, who knows since when.  It was the "missing" package.  I suppose it was mis-delivered to some house nearby but the neighbor was decent enough to drop it off at my house.  It is good to know there are still good people around.