multijimbo

I’ve spent some time recently helping my sisters pack up the house we grew up in. It was an emotional experience, but I’m still unpacking that (no pun intended) (probably) and want to take this particular perambulation in a different direction.

One of our early tasks was to pack up the books, and there were a lot of books, to go off to their new homes. In doing so, I was struck by just how efficient shelves are.

This is not a particularly notable observation, but it did ring with me. Part of that efficiency is that books are heavy and one shelf can handle enough books to make a box heavy to lift. And there was much lifting. But beyond that, shelves are efficient in their tidiness; a few reasonably sized shelves give rise to a small pyramid of boxes.

At this middle stage of my life, I have some reasonably nice shelves around the house, and more books than can fit comfortably upon them. But what to do about this is a different question, and again one I won’t address here.

Earlier in my life, I had crude shelves, boards and cinderblocks, and shelves are something that we are all familiar with and may not give a second thought to. But what’s the history of shelving? What is the archaeological evidence for the persistence of shelving through human permanent settlements?

I’m sure there is a niche of scholarly activity wherein people spend their time packing and unpacking the human history of shelving, and I may have to do some exploration of that scholarly activity, because I’m curious.

After all, we are coming to understand our earlier human selves more and more deeply as time goes on, how they lived and how they furnished their permanent settlements, and I wonder now whether we have some estimate of when shelving first appeared.

But beyond that, I now need to go back and look at how I use my shelves. Books, yes many books, and other things, nicknacks and things collected over many years, some of which have been tucked away behind other things.

And so, shelves. Good things, shelves. Useful. Overpacked. Carrying the weight of memories that we’ve accumulated over the years. Viva the shelf.

~ by Jim Anderson on 10 September 2023.

Posted in bizarre and random things