Thank you, Natalia, for the informative comment on yesterday's blog. I really appreciate it when someone responds to something I've said. It means that someone out there is reading my blog. I looked up arshin:

"The basic unit is the Russian cubit, called the arshin, which has been in use since the 16th century. It was standardized by Peter the Great in the 18th century to measure exactly twenty-eight English inches (71.12 cm)." (Wikipedia)

Thank you. But.

Did you, or someone, get the point I was trying to make? I wasn't really talking about Tolstoy or the details of that trek for land. I used his story as a cautionary analogy of what I've been doing, comparing that poor man's unrealistic greed for land with mine for books.

"At my back I always hear/Time's wing-ed chariot hurrying near."

I have to listen to it as I launch into what will probably be my last filing project. I'm enjoying it as I discover clippings and tear sheets and memos and letters and ideas that I stashed for future attention and development. But I'm trying to be ruthless as I acknowledge the lack of time remaining to deal with them all. I wish I could give me with my next shipment of paper to my university's files. I could offer a seminar or a series of talks presenting my ideas for novels, plays, movies, essays, whatever, that I won't have time to write. But that would be presuming that someone else wold be interested in what fascinates me. The good news is that I have found lots of blog material.

Stay tuned.