Cleaning My Desk

This was originally started sometime in late 2022.

In languid preparation for an office move I started sorting the papers on my desk into check later, store, and recycle.  

There was an end-of-year financial statement from 3 years ago - not the sort of thing I'd normally leave around,  a lot of hard copy quizzes (some were pretty clever), and the sort of flotsam I treasure: scrap paper - paper with parts of an essay written by an unknown hand - on which I scribbled something. 

There was part of a treasured verse from James Alley Blues by Rabbit Brown I first heard sung by Willie Watson:

I done seen better days, but I'm putting up with these
I done seen better days, but I’m putting up with these
I would have much a better time, but these girls, now, is so hard to please

His take is more mournful than the original:

I done seen better days but I'm puttin' up with these
I been havin' a much better time with
These girls now I'm so hard to please

On the back of lined paper which had an assignment dated this past January from a student whose name I didn't recognize (she must have dropped the course) I saw this:

As I typed in "fairtale of" into the search text box Google up popped:

 Isn't that wonderful?

Wait!  There's more: "Aaron Schiller - charred house on Martha's Vineyard"   It seems to be named Chilmark House after the adjacent pond( https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5915/5799/e58e/ceff/6b00/005d/newsletter/2016DS52.485.jpg?1494570849).  Looking at it now I can't understand why I made a note of it.

it might have been the next story about Anthony Esteves using the Japanese shou sugi ban technique to burn boards for a house he built in Maine (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/t-magazine/design/anthony-esteves-soot-house.html).  Now I know why this attracted me.  The transparent structure in the background will be "is a classic New England barn — to be finished in soot-paint, of course — which will serve as the family library, home to their collection of over 7,000 books."  
Yo

u had me at 7,000 books.