Distractions
The problem with packing all my books is that I'm bound to run into some that I'd forgotten all about, and be forced to glance inside them just to remind myself what they're like.
I've actually been pretty good about not being distracted, but I couldn't resist when I came across When We Were Rather Older, a 1926 book by Fairfax Downey and Jefferson Machamer containing parodies of every poem in Milne's When We Were Very Young; the parodies are about flappers and their ilk. A Pooh bibliography says the book "gained some notoriety in the Twenties when Milne's name was being mentioned in all the 'literate' circles."
I consulted a handy copyright table to determine that, as expected, the copyright on this book would have expired in 1954 had it not been renewed. Given how topical the book was in 1926, and how dated it quickly became, it seemed unlikely to me that the copyright would've been renewed 28 years later. Much to my surprise, I found the book listed in the extremely useful US Catalog of Copyright Entries (Renewals) on the 1926, titles from U to Z page; copyright was indeed renewed in 1953, which presumably means the book is still in copyright (thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act) (I rely on wikipedia more and more these days) until 2020, or a future date to be determined by later copyright extension acts, whichever comes last.
(Though I had a vague notion that there were two renewals possible, and that renewing once didn't necessarily mean it was renewed a second time. But I don't have time to look that up right now.)
At any rate, I think that (even in the unlikely event that anyone were to care about copyright for this particular book at this point) I can justifiably call it Fair Use to quote one brief poem in its entirety:
Meeting Halfway
Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit,
When I've a beau
Who appreciates
It.
We're not at the bottom,
We're not at the top.
We can hear
Anybody
In time to
Stop.
