"45 B.C. Julius Caesar adjusts 46 B.C. ~ known as the Year of Confusion with its 445 days ~ by fixing 365 days and six hours as the length of a year, with one day intercalated every four years, a leap."

~ A Book of Days for the Literary Year, Edited by Neal. T. Jones, Thames and Hudson 1984.

Happy Birthday to all you Leap Year babies!  (How old are you today?)

 

Find us on Facebook: Cayuga-on-the-Grand OR The Neat Little Bookshop

 

 

 

 



When the sun shines upon the crust of March
In the bare wood, how blue the shadows lie
Along the snow between the gray tree-boles!
And where the muffled stream runs, bluer still
Between its snowy banks edged with frail ice,
The silvery oaks and sugar maples stand
Like a faint tracing on a lacquer tray,
Or a worn pattern on old Sheffield plate.
The strong sun melts the snow in open places;
A calling crow flies over, trailing north
His silent shadow down the wooded slope;
And then to bring the winter scene to life,
Etched on the memory like a haunting smile
A bluebird flashes to an apple bough.

~  Bliss Carmen, "A Bluebird in March" ~ Sanctuary, Sunshine House Sonnets,
McClelland & Stewart, 1929.

Along the Grand

[Photos:  Cayuga-on-the-Grand, Feb., 2016 lbw]

SANCTUARY by Bliss Carman

Out of the turmoil whither shall I go?
How cure the fever of a mind distraught,
The crazed futility of haste assuage,
And dear serenity's lost poise restore?
Is there no respite for the racing pulse,
No haven from the day's demoniac din
And the relentless frenzy of the night?
Were may the haunting peace of God be found?
No cabined luxury contents the soul,
Homesick for solace of its native air.
For healing of the wind among the pines,
The stilling beauty of the clear new moon,
The strength of hills, the joy of singing streams,
Take any road at hand, to Out-of-doors.

~ ESCAPE by Bliss Carman (1861 - 1929) Canadian Poet Laureate

 

 

SANCTUARY SUNSHINE HOUSE SONNETS by Bliss Carman, Illustrations by Whitman Bailey.

McClelland & Stewart, 1929.

 

 

 

 

{...for our friends in Florida.}

[Photos: Railway Bridge Over Grand at Cayuga Feb.2016 lbw]

 

 

"Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours;  she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light;  and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to 'keep blind-man's holiday'."

"String is my foible.  My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.  To me an Indian-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I have one which is not new;  one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago.  I have really tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.

"I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies ~ careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction--any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer's day, because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book;  of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well; and this little unnecessary waster of paper (his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.  Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in;  the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again.  Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole instead of a half sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides..."

~ Elizabeth Gaskell, known as Mrs. Gaskell (1810 - 1865) English novelist. CRANFORD, Chatto & Windus Publishers, 1907.
[Photo miniature: Wikipedia.]

[Tomorrow: "String is my foible...Small pieces of butter grieve others."]

Haldimand County

 

 
 

[Photos:  February 17, 2016 lbw]

TOPIC:  Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932 - 1996) Dutch theologian, writer.

Quotations Henri Nouwen.

"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares."

Note:  Henri J.M. Nouwen is the topic of our Third Thursday readings this month.

Serial Romance 2 for $1 FEBRUARY ONLY

 

 

 

 

"Because of a friend ~ life is a little stronger, a fuller, more gracious thing;  for a friend's existence, whether he be near or far.  If a friend is close at hand, that is best but if he is far away he is still there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honour, to admire, to love."

~ Arthur C. Benson (1862 - 1925) English essayist, poet, author.

"Happy Valentine's Day"

 

 

"You're my friend ~
What a thing friendship is, world without end!"
~ Robert Browning, The Flight of the Duchess

"In every mess I finds a friend."

~ Charles Dibdin, Jack in His Element

"Money can't buy friends
but you can get a better class of enemy."
~ Spike Milligan

"Sir, I look upon every day to be

lost, in which I do not make

a new acquaintance."

~ Samuel Johnson

 

"Even if we take matrimony

at its lowest, even if we regard it

as no more than a sort of friendship

recognized by the police."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque

~ THE LITTLE BOOK of Friends, A Compilation by Brockhampton Press 1996.

"I do love nothing in the world so well as you;  is not that strange?"
~ Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

"Love cannot be wasted.
It makes no difference where
it is bestowed; it always
brings in big returns."
~ Anonymous


"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination...."
~ John Keats

"There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream."
~ Thomas Moore


Compiled by Heather H. Copp, Harvest House Publishers, 1997.

"And who will walk a mile with me
     Along life's weary way?
A friend whose heart has eyes to see
The stars shine out o'er the darkening lea."

~ Henry van Dyke, A Wayfaring Song

[Photo from cover of a 1935 book by J. Hartley Manners titled, Peg O' My Heart]

It's all I have to bring today,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, ~
Some one the sum could tell, ~
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

~ Emily Dickinson

[Photo files lbw]

"My lover spoke and said to me,

Arise, my darling,

my beautiful one, and come with me.

See!  The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come...."

 

 

~ The Song of Songs

 

"There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream."

 

~ Thomas Moore

 

VALENTINE'S DAY is Sunday, February 14. [Photo files:  Jackson House, King Street & Centennial, Stoney Creek. lbw]

 



"Today there are two elements that go into friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either,... - One is Truth.  A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud....-.  The other element of friendship is Tenderness....- When a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune....-.  I wish friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence.  It must plant itself on the ground before it walks over the moon...-.  The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.  It must not surmise or provide for infirmity.  It treats its object as a god, that it may defy both."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Friendship and Love"


VALENTINE'S DAY is Sunday, February 14

 

"Julilly sat on her mat and cried.  She had thought and dreamed of Lester and Adam dragging their heavy chains back to Mississippi.  Now Jeb said they might be free right now in Canada.  Inside her there was a welled-up fountain of joy.  The tears came from its overflowing.
"But what's this Underground Railway?"  Liza finally asked.
"You don't know 'bout the railway?"  Jeb laughed.
"The slave catchers gave us the name.  They said run-away slaves just seem to disappear underground and that there must be a railway down there."

~ Underground to Canada, Barbara Smucker,  Clarke, Irwin & Company Limited, 1977
Barbara Smucker (1915 - 2003), was a Mennonite who lived and worked as a librarian in Waterloo, Ontario.


Jenny crack corn and I don't care,
Jenny crack corn and I don't care,
Jenny crack corn and I don't care,
My massa's gone away!

I am bound for the promised land.
I am bound for the promised land.
Oh, who will come and go with me?
I am bound for the promised land.

[Photo:  Haldimand County lbw]