Have a safe & happy Hallowe'en.

Pirates infinitely prefer gold and jewels to bales of cloth, however gaudy.

"There is often confusion between the terms 'pirate,' 'buccaneer,' and 'privateer.'  Pirates and buccaneers are criminals, while privateers operate within the bounds of the law.  Pirates and buccaneers do on occasion sail as privateers.  A privateer is a man who sails with a commission known as a letter of marque.  These letters are issued by governments and permit the privateer to take and make prize of enemy ships."  Pirateology, Candlewick Press 2006.


"Woe-betide," the pirate a.k.a Dummy Board, will not be at The Neat L'l Bookshop today.  Stormy seas!
"A short life and a merry one, that's my motto!"  ~ Black Bart Roberts, Condemned for piracy , 1711.
(Click on photo for larger image. lbw)

29 Talbot St. West (Hwy #3)

Bookshop Calendar ~ Readings & Fascinating Personalities:

Nov. 2    Sat.,  7:30  We will be attending "Steel City Stories/Brushes w/Greatness" at
Christ's Church Cathedral in Hamilton.  For details visit Facebook "Steel City Stories."
Nov. 16  Sat., 10:30 - 3:00 Gary McHale  Victory in the No-Go Zone.
Nov. 21  Thu., 1:00 Dr. Alan Bishop ~ Female Poets of World War I.
Dec. 19  Thu., 1:00 Christmas ~ Bring your own item.
Jan. 16   Thu., 1:00 Doris Kienitz East Germany and the Escape.
Feb. 20   Thu., 1:00 Suzanne Hurley Reading from her own mystery novels.
Mar. 20  Thu., 1:00 Neil Paul ~ Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
April 17  Thu., 1:00 Poetry Favourites ~ Bring your own item.

Everyone Welcome ~  "The coffee pot's always on..."  (Please let us know if you would like to be added to our e-mail list for prior reminder of event.  lbwalker@shaw.ca or neatlittlebookshop@gmail.com )

The Black Cat

Visit www.poemuseum.org

"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.  Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.  Yet mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream.  But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul.
"This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body.
"I determined to wall it up in the cellar - as the monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.
"For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted.  Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening.  Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up..."

~ *Edgar Allan Poe (d. Oct. 7, 1809, 40 years of age)  American writer. London Oxford University Press.

"In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream."
~ The Hero as Man of Letters

"The true University of these days is a collection of books."
~ The Hero as King

"A good book is the purest essence of a human soul."  ~ Speech in support of the London Library, 1840.

~ Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)  Scottish philosopher, writer, teacher.

~ The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations 3rd ed., Oxford University Press.

To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
     The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
     From Nature's sentinels.

In cave if I presumed to hide,
     The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
     To make me visible.

~Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) American poet

Trees of Canada

The Beautiful Hazelnut Tree ~ unfamiliar to many of us is highly valued for its fruit/nut.
A topic for research is the current use of imported hazelnuts in Ontario.  A member of The Haldimand Stewardship Council refers to the movement to plant hazelnut trees in Haldimand as a future supply for chocolate companies.

~ Native Trees of Canada, R. C. Hosie, 8th ed. does not list the hazelnut tree.
Photo taken Oct. 21, Simcoe, ON lbw.

"I believe that the scientist is trying to express absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that I find in science and art, and in an attempt to lead a good life, all the religion that I want."

~ John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892 - 1964)  British scientist.  Living Philosophies (1931)

(Photo files:  lbw)

~ THE GREAT THOUGHTS Compiled by George Seldes, Ballantine Books, 1985

Hazelnut Tree ~ Located in Simcoe, Ontario.

Photo:  October 21, 2013.

Recognize this nut? 

The "Old" Bridge

View from Bob Baigent Park ~

Photo:  October 22, 2013 lbw

Watching the Grand ~ the "old" bridge remains open to traffic.  Activity, both on land and on the water, an indication that building of the "new" bridge is in progress.  Our understanding is that it will rise parallel to the old bridge and will be moved into position after removal of the old.

Photo:  Tuesday, October 22 ~ lbw

All Saints' Day - n. a Christian festival in honour of the souls in heaven, celebrated on 1 Nov. in Western Churches and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Churches. (Followed by All Souls' Day on 1 Nov.)

~Oxford Canadian Dictionary, Edited by Katherine Barber, Oxford University Press, 1998.

The origin of the Festival of All Saint's Day celebrated in the west goes back to 609 or 610 when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs.

~ Wikipedia

Hallowe'ens Past ~ The Eve of All Saints' Day
October 31

"Trick-or-treat" ~ n., v., & interj. esp. N. Amer.  a Halloween custom in which children, dressed in costumes, knock on the doors of neighbours soliciting a treat of esp. candy, threatening, in accordance with tradition, to commit a prank if denied.  " trick or treat!" ~ interj. Shouted by children while trick-or-treating.

"Halloween apples" ~ interj. Cdn (Prairies) uttered by children going door to door on Halloween to collect candies etc.

~ The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, Edited by Katherine Barber, Oxford University Press, 1998.

"A Land of Hope and Sunshine"

Piano Old Brewery Bay Orillia

"In the preface [Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town] Leacock made the patently false claim that he had not done 'anything so ridiculously easy as writing about a real place and real people.'  He could not have done otherwise.  He was mistakenly convinced that he had the power to create lifelike characters. At the same time he admitted that 'I have no notion as to how to make things happen.'  What he did have was an abundant ability to transfer the genuine article from life to the printed page in compressed form." 
~ Stephen Leacock A biography, David M. Legate, Doubleday Canada Limited, 1970.

In the preface of Sunshine Sketches Leacock claims that his imaginary little town of Mariposa is not a real town ~ that it is about seventy or eighty of them ~ that the inspiration of the book comes from "a land of hope and sunshine where little towns spread their square streets and their trim maple trees beside placid lakes."  However, it took people in Orillia, Ontario, a while to get over the perception that many of the characters were exaggerations of townsfolk they knew.

Dining Room Old Brewery Bay

" '...it was a fascinating business to watch them [the sketches] developing in the telling.'*  Typically, Leacock acted them with appropriate gestures, great gusto and evident self-appreciation.  Here was the raconteur in action.  Guests at the frequent dinner parties, over which Trix presided as a gracious hostess, remember how the host's chair was placed well back from the end of the table so that he could rise at any moment to walk up and down while making a point, as though he were in the classroom.
"In fact, this was the test to which he subjected most of his short bits and pieces.  He would read them aloud in his study or in the dining room to whatever audience he could assemble.  at Old Brewery Bay his favourite audience was his brother George, who was a well-known wit himself and the source of some of Stephen's material.  The two of them would go over the material, tossing ideas back and forth, laughing all the while, until Stephen felt that they had hit on the best possible form."

*editor B. K. Sandwell
~ David M. Legate, STEPHEN LEACOCK, A biography, 1970. Doubleday Canada Limited.

Kitchen Leacock's Summer Home, Orillia

"Many of my friends are under the impression that I write these humorous nothings in idle moments when the wearied brain is unable to perform the serious labours of the economist.  My own experience is exactly the other way.  The writing of solid, instructive stuff fortified by facts and figures is easy enough...
"...but to write something out of one's own mind, worth reading for its own sake, is an arduous contrivance only to be achieved in fortunate moments, few and far between."

Preface to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, Stephen Leacock, McGill University, June, 1912.

Oral Tradition ~

The Old Brewery Bay Leacock's Home Orillia

"The most striking aspect of Leacock's style is the illusion of a speaking voice, which is so strong in all his works.  Like his masters, Dickens and Mark Twain, Leacock was a great lecturer and raconteur, and many of his pieces must be read aloud or recited for their full effect.  North American humour has always been rooted in the oral tradition...
"Much of the humour of his best pieces comes from their modesty of tone.  They seem to be recounted, as simply and straightforwardly as possible, by someone who is not intending to amuse us and would probably find our amusement puzzling."

~ The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature 2nd ed., Eugene Benson & Wm. Toye, 1997. Oxford University Press Canada.
(Leacock photos:  lbwalker)

Knowledge ~

Knowledge ~ Our readers know that The Neat L'l Bookshop blog consists of a daily thought gained from picking up a book.  Within reach in a library are any number of books where one can discover a new thought, a worthwhile tidbit of knowledge or simply stumble upon an illustration or a picture of something beautiful.  Does an e-reader afford us this same luxury?  I don't know.  Certainly the computer gives us instant results on any subject.  It just doesn't feel the same as being surrounded by a private library.

*One of the libraries in Canadian author Stephen Leacock's summer home in Orillia.

     

Smile for Today ~

We all know the feeling of love and anticipation when a child runs up to us and from their hand to ours presents us with a special bouquet of flowers ~ Nature hands us a bouquet everyday.

Reminder:  Today, 1:30 p.m., our guest is Jill Marshall, author of  To the Arctic and Home Again.

32nd President of the USA ~ FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT (1882 - 1945)

"A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted -- in the air.

A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest, at the command, of his head."

      Radio address, October 26, 1939.

     

"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself.  That, in its essence, is Fascism ~ ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."

     Message proposing the Monopoly Investigation, 1938.

~  THE GREAT THOUGHTS...the ideas that have shaped the history of the world. Compiled by George Seldes, Ballantine, 1985.

Thursday, October 17 The Neat L'l Bookshop

From working in her pajamas (in her home office) to rescuing a "scrawny balding white chicken playing Russian roulette in the middle of the intersection," writer Jill Marshall has given us an insight into the Marshall family home-life.

On Thursday, October 17, 1:30 p.m.  Jill will be in The Neat L'l Bookshop.  Join us for what promises to be a fun afternoon.  (Note the change in time, 1:30 p.m., from our usual 1:00.)

 

GRATITUDE by Edgar A. Guest

Be grateful for the kindly friends
     That walk along your way;
Be grateful for the skies of blue
     That smile from day to day;

Be grateful for the health you own,
    The work you find to do,
For round about you there are men
     Less fortunate than you.

Be grateful for the growing trees,
     The roses soon to bloom,
The tenderness of kindly hearts
     That shared your days of gloom;

Be grateful for the morning dew,
     The grass beneath your feet,
The soft caresses of your babes
     And all their laughter sweet.

Acquire the grateful habit,
     Learn to see how blest you are,
How much there is to gladden life,
     How little life to mar!

And what if rain shall fall today
     And you with grief are sad;
Be grateful that you can recall
     The joys that you have had.

*Edgar A. Guest "The Poet of the People."  American poet.  His work first appeared in 1895 (age fourteen) in the Detroit Free Press ~ his column was syndicated in over three hundred newspapers.

Holiday Greetings

Thanksgiving Greetings Dated 1911

        
            Wishing You a  Happy Thanksgiving Weekend...
                                        

Our Fascinating Personality on Thursday, October 17, 1:30 p.m. will be local author Jill Marshall.  Jill went to Yellowknife when her husband was appointed to the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.  While there, she wrote for two local papers, hosted a weekly radio show, made five parkas and got her motorcycle licence.
Her collection of stories in To The Arctic and Home Again include some humorous, some serious and all of interest.
We look forward to her visit.  Everyone welcome. 

  

The Neat Little Book Shop has a new e-mail address.  Send us a line!  neatlittlebookshop@gmail.com

Congratulations Canadian Author Alice Monroe winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.  Three-time winner of the Governor General's Award for fiction and winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her life-time body of work.

Progress and Poverty (1879)*

"This association of poverty with progress is the great enigma of our times.  It is the central fact from which spring industrial, social, and political difficulties that perplex the world, and with which statesmanship and philanthropy and education grapple in vain. . .It is the riddle which the Sphinx of Fate puts to our civilization, and which not to answer is to be destroyed.
"So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent."  Introductory:  The Problem

~ HENRY GEORGE (1839 - 1897) American economist, single tax proponent.

*"Few other American books and certainly no other economic treatise exercised a comparable influence in the world at large/" ~ Henry Steele Commager, Living Ideas in America.

Smile For Today

 

Village Green...and Red and Yellow

Only in a used bookshop ~

Purchased in The Neat L'l Bookshop BIG MAN COMING DOWN THE ROAD, Penguin Canada, 2007. "UNCORRECTED AND UNPUBLISHED PROOFS - CONFIDENTIAL"   Unpublished proofs are the preliminary copies sent out to select critics and media ~ not distributed to the public.

There are often changes in text and/or graphics in the finished product.  For example, the cover of BIG MAN, does not include the lady with the whip!

l - r Chris Maher, Ron Edwards, Pat Lightfoot, Ron Neville

Members of the Haldimand-Norfolk Stewardship Council met at the OPG on Saturday, October 12, for a planning meeting.  Susan Thurston, OPG representative and Council member, facilitated.

"Dedicated volunteers and stakeholders who share a concern for the environment" discussed on-going programs and projects.The Norfolk Land Stewardship Council and the Haldimand Stewardship Council joined together after the Ministry of Natural Resources withdrew Stewardship funding across the province.

For information on the work of the Stewardship and how you can get involved, visit www.hnstewardshipcouncils.org

The office of Haldimand-Norfolk Stewardship Council is located on Cayuga Street, Cayuga, Ontario.

*Ontario Power Generating

"Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine."

~ Walter Cronkite (1916 - 2009)  American broadcast journalist.

THERE came a wind like a bugle ;
     It quivered through the grass,
And a green chill upon the heat
So ominous did pass
We barred the windows and the doors
As from an emerald ghost ;
The doom's electric moccason
That very instant passed.
On a strange mob of panting trees,
And fences fled away,
And rivers where the houses ran
The living looked that day.
The bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings whirled.
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the world !

~ Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886) Ameican poet.

Preface from Poems, 1890*:  "The verses of Emily Dickinson belong emphatically to what Emerson long since called "the Poetry of the Portfolio," ~ something produced absolutely without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind."
"a recluse by temperament and habit, literally spending years without setting her foot beyond the doorstep, and many more years during which her walks were strictly limited to her father's grounds."

*Thomas Wentworth Higginson.  (Higginson with Mabel L. Todd edited and published the firstset of Emily Dickenson's poetry in 1890.  "It was hailed as a literary event.")

Cover of POEMS



The Old Net Shed ~ Quaint Bookshop Meaford, ON

 "We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change.  And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn."
~ Peter F. Drucker (1909 - 2005) Austrian-born American writer, professor, management consultant.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities.  In the expert's mind there are few."
~ Shunryu Suzuki (1904 - 1971)  Japanese Soto Zen Monk.

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
~ H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946) English writer.

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." ~ Malcolm Forbes (1919 - 1990)  Publisher of Forbes Magazine.

"...whenever we exaggerate or demonize,, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose.  Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose.  For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country.  It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking:  the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace 'socialized medicine.'

"It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics.  This is not a problem for the right;  a polarized electorate - or one that easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate - works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government.  After all, a cynical electorate is a self-centered electorate.
"But for those of us who believe that government has a role to play in promoting opportunity and prosperity for all Americans, a polarized electorate isn't good enough."

~ Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope, Crown Publishers, 2006.

Emily Dickinson ~

BESIDES the autumn poets sing,
     A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eves, ~
Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a sqirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear !

~ When Emily died in 1886, her sister Lavina found a box containing hundreds of poems ~ the first set was published in 1890.