Page 522 - Demo

Fools%u2019 Journey516room which would be used by people who couldn%u2019t justify building and equipping their own, which was gratifying to both Lynn and me.Finally, I needed to do something with several partial boxes of photographic paper, which I didn%u2019t feel would sell for very much on eBay. So I gave them to the school where I had donated my old enlarger a few years earlier. The art teacher was very appreciative, and said it would be used by students who couldn%u2019t afford to buy their own.As the camera and darkroom equipment were selling, Lynn and I decided to dispose of some of our art and photography books. Over the years, we%u2019d accumulated a library of about 800 volumes. We%u2019d discussed weeding out some of them a few years earlier, but hadn%u2019t been ready. Now was the time. We approached two individuals we thought might consider buying them all as a collection, but there was no interest. So we scrutinized each book, and decided to keep the ones we found most interesting or meaningful, which came to 126 volumes. Of the remainder, we donated those related specifically to Indiana to the local Friends of the Library, which operates a bookshop to raise funds for library projects. The rest we hauled (in two heavily loaded trips) to Bloomington%u2019s Hoosier Hills Food Bank. Its primary mission is to provide food for those in need, and it distributes several million pounds of food annually through more than 100 non-profit agencies. One way it raises necessary funds, is by sponsoring a huge book sale each fall, and we were honored to help support it.During this period, we also reduced our inventory of display photographs by donating some to various institutions. The Midwest Museum of American Art in Elkhart already had 66 of them %u2014 some framed, some matted and mounted, some loose %u2014 and I donated enough additional prints to give them an archive of over 100. Lynn also gave them some of her artwork in the form of paper castings. I also donated several mounted and matted photographs to the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, and 38 framed photographs of grain elevators and feed mills went to the Purdue Agriculture Alumni Association. Twenty prints went to the Honeywell Arts & Entertainment Center in Wabash.