From the stairs this morning I saw condensation on the window and transom of the front door, which I would not have expected in October. A large puddle on the kitchen floor explained this, and I roused my wife to start on the cleanup while I went to turn off the water at the main shutoff valve. (The valve is awkward to reach, and stiff to turn.) The water clearly came from the dishwasher. The dishwasher had caused no problems in eighteen years, but made up for that overnight. The plumber tells us that the failure is in the dishwasher, not in any connection to it.
The basement had its own puddle, aggravated by fallen drywall tape and drywall debris. After some mopping, I hauled wet rugs into the backyard. One remained on the steps for some time until drained enough to be manageable. We will need to bring in someone to do serious drywall work.
One bookcase suffered. The books were swollen, so that it was difficult to extract the first couple from each shelf. Not all the books were affected, maybe eight of every ten, and those that were varied from a little damp to quite wet. Some are probably not salvageable. I don't know whether the bookcase itself will still be usable, for it is of veneer over plywood.
Had I been asked whether I wished to discard any of the books on the three shelves, I'd have probably said, No, why? Yet now the question for some is whether I'll replace them, and there the answer sometimes is No. I found Leszek Kolakowski's God Owes Us Nothing tremendously interesting, but do I need to review the theological history of Jansenism? Perhaps not. I have probably looked into John Lukacs's The Last European War within the last year or so, but will I replace that? Maybe not. On the other hand, I do want to have copies of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris, The Last Puritan, and some others that suffered damage.
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