"Teddy bears exist on the very borders of fantasy and reality, of waking and sleeping.  It is here, in these transitions, that our function is critical ~ at its most essential even.  While we are fantasy characters in daylight play,
                           at nighttime we are vey real protectors ~ guiding the companion through the magic and mystery of the darkness and shadows, dreams and nightmares."
~ Teddy's World, Mirja de Vries, 2002.  Joost Elffers Books.

Thank you, Cayuga & District Chamber of Commerce ~ A Special Thank-you to the out-going executive members who have worked untiringly behind the scenes to improve our community.  Thank you to President John Edelman and members who have allowed their names to stand yet another year! 

Welcome to the new executive members.  We look forward to an exciting 2014.
~ John & Lorna

Eric & Freddie

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...

"Man needs, for his happiness,  not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change."

~ Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) British philosopher

http://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm

Grand River Watch ~

Signs of a New Bridge!

Skateboard Park

Grand Snowfall ~

Ball Park

Tennis Courts

On Kindness ~

"This is my simple religion.  No need for temples.  No need for complicated philosophy.  Your own mind, your own heart is the temple.  Your philosophy is simple kindness."
~ Dalai Lama XIV

"All I'm saying is kindness don't have no boundries."
~ Kathryn Stockett, The Help.

Photo:  files 2010 lbw

"Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves."
~ James M. Barrie

"A gift is so often thought of in terms of the things we give, but our greatest giving is of our time and kindness and even comfort for those who need it.  We look on these gifts as unimportant ~ until we need them."
~ Joyce Sequichie Hifler

"One kind word can warm three winter months."
~ Japanese proverb

Photo:  files lbw

C. S. Lewis was born in Ireland November 29, 1898.  Best known for his classic The Chronicles of Narnia,  C.S. Lewis died on November 22, 1963 so his death was over-shadowed by the assasination of U.S. President J. F. Kennedy.  For fans of Lewis' fantasy of talking animals and mythical beasts, November 22 is a reminder of a magical world.

In Surprised by Joy, The Shape of My Early Life, Lewis describes his conversion from atheism to Christianity and the nature and purpose of joy in his life.

Source:  Wikipedia

"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot..."

"When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical," she said, "but I'm so ashamed of myself ~ all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy.

"At night, before we'd go to sleep, Jack liked to play some records;  and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record.  The lines he loved to hear were:  don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot.

"She wanted to make sure that the point came clear and went on:  'There'll be great Presidents again ~ and the Johnsons are wonderful, they've been wonderful to me ~ but there'll never be another Camelot again.'"

~ Jacqueline Kennedy (1929 - 1994) First Lady of U.S.A.
Source:  An Epilogue by Theodore H. White for LIFE, 25th Anniversary Special. 1988.

"He belongs to the people..."  Jackie Kennedy

Photos:  Courtesy of Scott Walker

Knowledge ~

"That we are made and intended to pursue knowledge is as certain as that we are made and intended for the improvement of our estate and we cannot tell how far or to what revelations the pursuit may lead us."

~ Goldwin Smith (1823 - 1910) British historian, essayist, journalist.

"What is more contemptible than a civilization that scorns knowledge of itself?"

 ~ John Ralston Saul (b. 1947) Canadian author, Past-President of PEN International (Postsecondary Education Network).

~ FAMOUS LASTING WORDS Great Canadian Quotations, J. R. Colombo, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 2000.

Moment in the bookshop ~ captured by Kim Jeffrey.
Alan Bishop, John Passfield & John Ballinger


Thank you, Kim

Neecha

Beautiful Neecha brings happiness to folks who don't often get to pet or observe a dog.  She is not new at socializing ~ she is thirteen years old, rolls over, sits up ~ all the time enjoying people.

This little dog brings a smile to folks in Grandview Lodge and Edgewater in Dunnville.  Yesterday she visited The Neat L'l Bookshop.  Come back soon, Neecha.

Testament of Youth/Testament of Friendship/Testament of Experience ~

Vera Brittain was born at Newcastle under Lyme, Staffordshire in December, 1893, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer.  During World War I she served as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse, an experience which interrupted her studies at Oxford and which she recounted in her autobiographical Testament of Youth (1933).
Although Vera wrote numerous volumes of poetry and fiction, she is more widely known for two later works:  Testament of Friendship (1940) and Testament of Experience (1957).

Her brother, her fiance and two close friends were killed in the war leading Vera toward becoming a pacifist.  She died in 1970.

Source:  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Ian Ousby, 1993.

Today in The Neat L'l Bookshop the topic:  Poetry WWI including Vera Brittain ~ Dr. Alan Bishop.  Everyone welcome.

Photo: Wikipedia



Elizabeth's Seven-Eyed "Grandpa Beaver"



On Childrens' Day ~

"I wanted to draw a dog.  I sat beside Carlow's kennel and stared at him for a long time.  Then I took a charred stick from the grate, split open a large brown-paper sack and drew a dog on the sack.

"My married sister who had taken drawing lessons looked at my dog and said, 'Not bad.'  Father spread the drawing on top of his newspaper, put on his spectacles, looked, and said, 'Um!'  Mother said, 'You are blacked with charred wood, wash!'  The paper sack was found years later among Father's papers.  He had written on it, "By Emily, aged eight."

~GROWING PAINS The Autobiography of Emily Carr,  Clarke Irwin & Company Ltd., 1946.

Season of gifts ~ We have a wonderful afternoon planned for you this Thursday.  Dr. Alan Bishop will be reading.  Third Thursdays are always reserved for an entertaining group of local authors, poets and other fascinating personalities.  They read from their own published work ~ sometimes introduce new work ~ and inevitably drift toward whatever literary subject interests those present.

Poetry of Vera Brittain will be Alan's focus this week; however, he has agreed to bring along one of his own books, Letters From a Generation.
              Thursday, November 21 at 1:00 p.m.

www.freedompress.ca

Thank you Tristan of Freedom Press and Gary McHale for a fun and informative afternoon ~ and for hanging around in the bookshop long after scheduled hours.

Available in The Neat Little Bookshop, VICTORY IN THE NO-GO ZONE.  $19.95, Gary McHale.  Freedom Press Canada Inc., 2013.

Doris Lessing on literary excellence ~

"It is interesting to imagine what our vision of the world would be like had there been no novelists, no storytellers.  Like the dark side of the moon, or the sea floors where fishes still unknown to science live, or reports from unexplored countries where maps said 'Here be monsters'.  Literature makes us all kin, because every tale is a report from people whose differences are only variations on the theme of our humanity.  Without the explorations of writers we would not know them.
"While I read a novel, enjoying all the skills that go with literary excellence - the design, the complexities, the ironies, the insights - I am saying, 'But wait a minute, here's a region of the world (or of society or of psychology) I haven't been in before.'
"If we can say, 'No human behaviour is alien to me', then it is because we know it all from literature."

~ Doris Lessing (Oct. 22, 1919 - Nov. 17, 2012)  English novelist

~ Forward to The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

English author Doris Lessing dead at age 94.  Born to British parents in Persia (now Iran) October 22, 1919, Lessing moved with her family to Zimbabwe, South Africa, at age five and lived there until she was twenty-nine.  Moved to England in 1949.
Leaving school at age fourteen she was self-educated from then on.

Lessing has over 55 works to her name having won among many awards the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007 at the age of eighty-eight.  A word for young writers?  Doris advised, "Acquire a tough skin as soon as possible."

Among Lessing's novels:  The Golden Notebook and The Grass is Singing.

All Quiet

"What mainly worries me, if you'll excuse my speaking on my own affairs for the moment, is a strengthening suspicion that in my character there is an antipathy between 'art' and 'life.'  I find that once I 'give in' to another person, as I have given in not altogether voluntarily, but almost completely, to Ruth,* it impossible to achieve that mental 'clenching' that crystallises a pattern and keeps it still while you draw it.  It's very easy to float along in a semi-submerged way, dissipating one's talent for pleasing by amusing and being affectionate to the other --easy because the returns are instant and delightful -- but I find, myself, that this letting-in of a second person spells death to perception and the desire to express, as well as the ability.  Time & time again I feel that before I write anything else at all I must drag myself out of the water, shake myself dry and sit down on a lonely rock to contemplate glittering loneliness.  Marriage, of course (since you mentioned marriage), is impossible if one wants to do this."

~ Philip Larkin.  Letter to J. B. Sutton, 7 April 1946.  English poet, novelist (Aug. 9, 1922 - Dec. 2, 1985)  Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940 - 1985.  Edited by Anthony Thwaite.  Faber and Faber Limited, 1992.
*Ruth was Larkin's first girlfriend.  Met in 1945.  Split in 1950.

Waiting for Morning Coffee & Cable News

l-r Peter Kamerman, Gary McHale ~ Caledonia

BOOK SIGNING Sat. Nov. 16
10:30 - 3:00

"Victory in the No-Go Zone"

["No-Go Zone" -- the strip of land on Douglas Creek Development bordering an adjacent residential area.]

Smiles for Today ~

"Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes."  ~ John O'Hara

"People who throw kisses are hopelessly lazy." ~ Bob Hope, American entertainer

"He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help."  ~ Abraham Lincoln

"One man with courage makes a majority."  ~ Andrew Jackson

"Beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."

NATTY Trappings, 5 Cayuga Street ~ "Naturally Green..."  Unique hand-painted antique and vintage funishings.  Workshops.  www.nattytrappings.com 

"Literary excellence is the chief pleasure in reading..."

"I hold on to my faith that enough people can tell the difference between a good novel and a bad one, and take the risk of saying that literary excellence is the chief pleasure in reading, but another is how one may use a novel or tale for information.  Literature maps the world for us, fleshing out what we get from newspaper articles and television reports, giving us a parallel landscape infinitely rich and various where we may stroll any time we like, tourists in imaginary worlds that mirror real ones.  What did we know about the feel, taste, texture, the airs and aromas of South America before the recent explosion of wonderful South American novels, most translated into English?  Or about Africa until the novels written by Africans in English, which issued from one end of the continent to the other?.... ~ we are invited in, for writers are like hosts:  come and share this with me."

~ Doris Lessing (b. Oct. 22, 1919) British novelist, poet.  Forward to The Cambridge Guide to LITERATURE IN ENGLISH, Ian Ousby. 1993

Village Green

Icy Riverscape

Today We Have Snow

To My Brother by Vera Brittain (In memory of July 1st, 1916)

Your battle-wounds are scars upon my heart,
Received when in that grand and tragic 'show'
You played your part,
Two years ago,

And silver in the summer morning sun
I see the symbol of your courage glow ~
That Cross you won
Two years ago.

May you endure to lead the Last Advance
And with your men pursue the flying foe
As once in France
Two years ago.

~ Vera Brittain (Dec. 29, 1893 - March 29, 1970) British writer, poet, feminist and pacifist.

Photo:  Wikipedia

To Our Readers:  On Thursday, November 21, a special afternoon with Dr. Alan Bishop ~ a reading and discussion of poet and pacifist Vera Brittain.  Everyone welcome.  1:00 p.m.

[Vera Brittain lost her brother, her fiancee and several close friends in the war.]

"If ye break faith ~

             we shall not sleep"  ~John McCrae, In Flanders Fields, Punch, Dec. 8, 1915.

(Photo:  lbwalker) 

Nine Elms British Cemetery, Belgium

The town newspaper wrote, "the news cast a gloom over the community for Will was well liked by everybody and his parents have the sympathy of the community in their loss."

The main action had taken place on November 6 where William Duff was wounded in the heel by a shell and was taken to the number 44 casualty clearing station apparently in good spirits.  Tragically on November 8, 1917 Duff died of his wounds and was buried in the Nine Elms British Cemetery in Belgium.  He was just 22 years old.

Later in a letter to the Advocate, Lt. Colonel Andrew T. Thompson of Ruthven, Cayuga, wrote "He (Drew Thompson) served in the 4th Battalion, and poor brave Billy Duff was out with him on many a wiring party in no mans land.  The young men thought very highly of each other, and my son feels the death of his old Cayuga comrade very keenly."

~ Research by Brendan Oliver of Hamilton, Ontario.  Brendan has put together the facts about this young soldier.  He continues to look for "more personal accounts."  If you have information about William or his family ~ however seemingly insignificant ~ please contact Brendan at griffs8_@hotmail.com

Duff Family Stone, Cayuga, Ontario

"Our home can never be the same for out of it went much of its joy and light in the person of my third son William Selkirk, who was slain at Passchendaele and sleeps in a soldiers grave in Belgium." ~ David A. Duff

Duff trained at Camp Borden and sailed from Halifax to Liverpool aboard the S.S. Coronia on October 31, 1916.

In early February 1917 Duff volunteered to go to France and was attached to the 4th Battalion going almost immediately into the trenches and then taking part in minor engagements.  On the 9th of April his regiment was engaged in the great battle of Vimy Ridge where he received a severe shrapnel wound to the face.  This kept him at the Hospital in Boulogne and at the base for a month before rejoining his regiment.

About the end of August Duff was granted a leave of absence for three weeks most of which was spent in Scotland visiting relatives in Perthshire and Dundee.

On the 23rd of September he returned to France and Flanders where preparations were under way for the taking of Passchendale ridge.  William wrote home to his parents at this time outlining his experiences in the army and thanking them for the gifts he had received. William wrote, "Ollie's box contained a little Bible from Jack and Marjory and believe me, I never prized anything as much, coming as it did at this particular time."

*The newspaper clipping that led Brendan Oliver on his quest to learn more about the young man in uniform.  Brendan has a lot of factual information about Duff and is looking for more personal accounts of the soldier.  If you have any information about the Duffs, please contact Brendan at griff8_@hotmail.com
Tomorrow:  Passchendale.
Research courtesy of Brendan Oliver of Hamilton

Neat Little Bookshop Calendar

Third Thursdays ~ Coffee pot's always on...

Nov. 21 1:00 Dr. Alan Bishop WWI Poetry
Dec. 19  1:00 Christmas ~ Bring your own item
Jan. 16  1:00 Doris Kienitz East Germany & the Escape
Feb. 20 1:00 Suzanne Hurley's Mysteries
Mar. 20 1:00 Neil Paul~ Gerard Manley Hopkins Poetry
Apr. 17   1:00 Your Favourite Poetry

BOOK SIGNING Sat. Nov. 16, 10:30 - 3:00 Gary McHale
~ Victory in the No-Go Zone

Informal Round Table ~ Everyone welcome.

William Selkirk Duff volunteered to go to France and was attached to the 4th Battalion going almost immediately into the trenches.  Duff had spent his boyhood in the villages of Cayuga and Jarvis.  Upon leaving school Duff entered the service of the Union Bank of Canada occupying positions in the branches at Cayuga, Canfield and Smithville.  At the time of his enlistment he held the position of accountant at the Pape and Danforth branch of the Bank of Commerce in Toronto.
He enlisted at Cayuga on February 19, 1916.  He stood 5' 6" tall, had blue eyes, dark hair, a fair complexion and no prior military experience.

(Research courtesy of Brendan Oliver.  Brendan was captivated by the soldier's story when he discovered a yellowed newspaper clipping at an auction sale.  He welcomes any stories or photographs related to the Duff family.)

Tomorrow:  William Selkirk Duff and the newspaper article from 1917 that captivated Brendan Oliver's heart.

Wearing a Red Poppy Is to Remember ~

~ A Poppy Is to Remember, Heather Patterson & Ron Lightburn, North Winds Press A Division of Scholastic Canada. 2004

William Selkirk Duff

William Selkirk Duff was born in Selkirk, Ontario, on December 30, 1894 to David A. and Angelina P. Duff (nee Birdsall) of Cayuga.  He had two brothers, Oliver Wenzel and Whitson D. and a sister Jessie Duff.  His father was a well known and well respected Principal in Cayuga.  The Duff family resided at 26 Munsee Street in Cayuga.

A small, faded newspaper clipping has led Brendan Oliver on an earnest search for information about the young man in uniform, his family and his service to his country.

In the days leading to November 11 The Neat Little Bookshop blog will follow Brendan's discoveries with the hope that some of our readers can assist with additional stories or photographs.

Plaque in Cayuga United Church

(Photos: Collection Brendan Oliver. For larger image please click on photo.)  Brendan has found lots of information; however, he continues to hope that personal stories will come in as he continues his search.  Reach Brenda at griff8_@hotmail.com

That is griff8 underscore @hotmail.com   

Winner of the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize is Edmonton author Lynn Coady for her short-story collection, Hellgoing.*

Coady has five previous books including The Antagonist, a Giller finalist in 2011.

The $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize is given for the year's best book of Canadian Fiction.

* House of Anansi Press, 2013.



 

"It was, and is common knowledge that the law has not been enforced...The court has been and will be patient but the court cannot turn a blind eye to the blatant contempt of the court's lawful order....Whatever is being done should be done peacefully but also lawfully, within the Rule of Law...

"...the Rule of Law is a 'pre-eminent condition of freedom and peace in a democratic society.' "

~ Judge D. Marshall, Cayuga Courthouse.

~VICTORY IN THE NO-GO ZONE, Winning the Fight Against Two-Tier Policing. G. McHale. Freedom Press Canada Inc., 2013.

Author Gary McHale will be in The Neat L'l Bookshop on Saturday, November 16, 10:30 - 3:00. 

English poet and novelist, Philip Larkin, referring to the work of a contemporary poet, "...But I do admire the way it's a long time before you notice he doesn't rhyme hardly at all.  That is an admirable feature, & an accomplishment I envy, though personally I'd as soon venture forth without rhyme as without boots in a meadow of snakes."

~ Letter to Norman Iles, April 16, 1944.  Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, edited by A. Thwaite, Faber and Faber Limited, 1992. Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985)

Pastural, tranquil Haldimand countryside.  Earthy.  Autumnal.  Agricultural.  Rural.  Searching for words.

(For larger image, pls. click on photo. Taken Nov. 2. lbw.)

"When in 1841 William Henry Fox discovered how a photographic image could be attached permanently to paper, it seemed to many that the art of painting had been dealt a body blow from which it would never recover.  In fact, some painters were so convinced that their careers as artists were in danger that they began trying to paint with a photographic realism that they had never tried before..."

~ RURAL LIFE, Adrian Vincent, Bloomsbury Books, 1987.

" The Flanders Campaign of 1917 was one of the most insane and brutal blood-baths in the history of war.
"For eight months the attacks ground away.  When winter and lack of 'cannon fodder' brought them to a halt, 500,000 men had been killed, wounded, gassed or driven insane in Flanders Fields.  For this fearful price, Haig had gained just four and a half miles!"

~ In FLANDERS FIELDS The 1917 Campaign, Leon Wolff, Ballantine Books, 1958/ The Viking Press Inc.

Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist ~ 2013

Dennis Bock - Going Home Again
Lynn Coady - Hellgoing
Craig Davidson - Cataract City
Lisa Moore - Caught
Dan Vyleta - The Crooked Maid

"The first word in fiction for twenty years."

The winner will be announced on CBC live Tuesday, November 5, 9:00 a.m.