Dr. Seuss On Writing ~

Dr. Seuss as quoted by biographers* said, "English and writing was my major, but I think that's a mistake.  That's teaching you the mechanics of getting water out of a well that may not exist."

In The Joy of Books, Eric Burns writes, "[The writer] must be indiscriminate, willing to do almost anything for experience;  he must be selective, unwilling to repeat himself for the sake of ease or compromise himself for the sake of novelty....
"The writer, though, cannot rely solely on his own experience, as it makes up too limited a domain.  He is but one person, and humanity a multitude of shared traits, conflicting values and radically differing perspectives.  The writer needs a broader vantage point than his own resources can provide, one that embraces people and places and practices which would otherwise be alien to him.

"Commenting on the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Will Durant writes, 'Since any man's experience can be no more than a microscopic fragment of reality, Leonardo supplemented his with reading, which can be experience by proxy.' "
~ The Joy of Books, Confessions of a Lifelong Reader, Prometheus Books, 1995.

* Judith & Neil Morgan.



Along the Heritage Grand ~



"I turned and looked back upward.

The whole sky was blue;

And the thick flakes floating at a pause

Were but frost knots on an airy gauze,

With the sun shining through." 

~ Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) American poet, "Afterflakes."

(Photos:  The Grand, Cayuga. January, 2013 lbw)



"How do you like this cold weather?  I hope you have all been earnestly praying for it as a salutary relief from the dreadfully mild and unhealthy season preceding it, fancying yourself half putrified [sic] from the want of it, and that you now all draw into the fire, complain that you never felt such bitterness of cold before, that you are half starved, quite frozen, and wish the mild weather back again with all your hearts."

~ excerpt from a Jane Austin (1775 - 1817) Letter. The English Year, compiled by Geoffrey Grigson, Oxford University Press, 1967.

First Woman Elected to Canada's Parliament

Agnes MacPhail

When Agnes Campbell MacPhail walked down the long corridor to the opening of the Senate Chamber, she was so much aware of the fact that, as the first woman in Canadian Parliament, she was leading the way for others in the future, she claimed: "I could almost hear them coming."

This week the first woman ~ openly gay woman ~ became leader of a major political party, to sit as Premier of Ontario.

*1921 Progressive Party of Canada.  By 1926 ranks of the third party had dwindled to twelve.  MacPhail refused offers of a position in MacKenzie King's cabinet, remaining loyal to the Progressive Party.

For an outline of Agnes MacPhail's accomplishments:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Macphail 
(b. March 24, 1890 - d. February 13, 1954)

~ Footprints In The Snow, The Heros And Heroines Of Canada, Robert Livesey, Little Brick Schoolhouse, 1978.


Monday on the Waterfront ~
...and the work goes on

Cayuga-on-The-Grand





Sunday all Quiet on The Waterfront ~

The Neat Little Bookshop is located in the block approaching the bridge.  Come in and visit us.

(Photos taken Sun., Jan., 27. lbw)

Maddie ~

At age 12, Maddie was diagnosed with a rare and devastating disease.  At age 13, she could have fulfilled any wish. "A Disney cruise?  The change to meet your favorite movie star?  A five thousand dollar shopping spree?"
Maddie chose to build a school for orphaned children in an African village. And when she had accomplished that wish, she went on to provide clean water by building a well.

Told as only her Mother could tell it, the story of this beautiful and courageous child will warm your heart and forever inspire.

Visit:  www.maddieswishproject.com.  Watch Maddie's video at:  www.mindbreak.ca

Sharon Babineau lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

~ The girl who gave her wish away, Sharon Babineau, Bettie Youngs Book Publishers, 2013.  Available at The Neat Little Bookshop. $15. 

Smile for Today~

"Ihave discovered photography.

Now I can kill myself.

I have nothing else to learn."

~Pablo Picasso

February Goings On ~

Haldimand Motors Soup 'A Bowl, Talbot Rd., Cayuga, Friday, February 1, 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm.  Haldimand County Food Drive.


Cayuga Women's Institute Meeting, Monday, February 4, 1:30 pm  Brantwood Villa, The Common Room,  Robert Dell Court.  Topic:  Valentines/Love.

St. Paul's Anglican Church, Cayuga, Tuesday, February 12, 4:30 pm - 7:00 pm. Pancake & Sausage Supper. 

Canfield Women's Institute Valentine Luncheon, Thursday, February 14 at 12:00 pm.   Canfield Community Centre, 50 Talbot Rd., Canfield.  Lunch, card party $8 per person.  Tickets:  905-772-5160.

Smile for Today ~

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
~ Nelson Henderson

"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong."
~ Winston Churchill

~ Treasury of Wit & Wisdom, Reader's Digest, 2006

Winter

The wintry west extends his blast,
   And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
   The blinding sleet and snaw;
Wild-tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
   And roars frae bank to brae;
While bird and beast in covert rest,
   And pass the heartless day.

The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,'
   The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
   Than all the pride of May;
The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,
   My griefs it seems to join'
The leafless trees my fancy please,
   Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme
   These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm I rest, they must be best,
   Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want (O, do Thou grant
   This one request of mine!);
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
   Assist me to resign.

~ Robert Burns (January 25, 1759 - July 21, 1796)  Scottish Bard
Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Collins, 1955.
*Front Cover Pitkin Pictorials Ltd., 1973,  Portrait of Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, painted in 1828, 32 years after the poet's death.

The 2013 Man Booker International Prize longlist of finalists was announced on Wednesday, January 23.  Among the names:  a Canadian short-story and essay writer, Josip Novankovich.

Novankovich was born in 1956 in what is now Croatia; he was educated in medicine in Serbia.  When he moved to America where his Mother was from, he studied psychology and creative writing at Vassar Collage and Yale.
Today he lives in Montreal, Quebec and teaches creative writing at Concordia University, recently acquiring his Canadian citizenship.

The winner will be announced on May 22 in London, England.  Canadian short-story writer, Alice Munroe, won the prize in 2009.

www.themanbookerprize.com

In the Bleak Midwinter*

Canadian Winter

"Snow has fallen, and everything is white.  It is very cold...I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight ~ white trees, white fields ~ the heaps of stone by the roadside white ~ snow in the furrows...If he were to come I could not even hear his footsteps."

~ Katherine Mansfield, 1914 (Buckinghamshire) Oct. 14, 1888- Jan. 9, 1923  Writer of short stories. Born in New Zealand.  Spent years in England where she became friends with Virgina Woolf and D.H. Lawrence.
(Photo:  for our friends wintering in Florida, U.S.A. "Close your eyes for a moment.")  Photo taken snowstorm Dec. 29, 2012.
* Poem by English poet, Christina Rossetti

*Giddy!!! "/'gidi / adj. (giddier, giddiest) 1. having a sensation of whirling and a tendency to fall, stagger, or spin around:  dizzy.  2. a. overexcited as a result of success, pleasurable emotion, etc.; mentally intoxicated. b.
~ Oxford Canadian Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 1998.

This morning for the first time in weeks, unexpectedly, the photos feature on Blogspot works.

* Photos of riverbank Cayuga.  Building of the new bridge commenced this winter.  With any luck we will be able to bring photos of this historic event.  The Neat L'l Bookshop is located on Hwy. 3 in the block approaching the bridge.

"The Diminishing Few..."

"In 1980, the average CEO made forty-two times what an average hourly worker took home.  By 2005, the ratio was 262 to 1.*  Conservative outlets like the Wall Street Journal editorial page try to justify outlandish salaries and stock options as necessary to attract top talent, and suggest the economy actually performs better when America's corporate leaders are fat and happy.  But the explosion in CEO pay has had little to do with improved performance.  In fact, some of the country's most highly compensated CEOs over the past decade have presided over huge drops in earnings, losses in shareholder value, massive layoffs, and the underfunding of their workers' pension funds."
~ Published in 2006, Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope.  Crown Publishers/Random House.  In his 2013 Inaugural Speech, the U.S. President referred to "the diminishing few."

~ * CBC Peter Mansbridge answers the question how this happened. The National, Monday, January 21.

Word Watching ~  "Hope"

"[Few] on the partisan landscape can discuss the word 'hope' in a political context and be regarded as the least bit sincere.  Obama is such a man, and he proves it by employing a fresh and buoyant vocabulary to scrub away some of the toxins from contemporary political debate.  Those polling categories that presume to define the vast chasm between us do not, Obama reminds us, add up to the sum of our concerns or hint at where our hearts otherwise intersect."

~ John Balzar, Los Angeles Times, Review The Audacity of Hope, 2006.

In The AUDACITY of HOPE,  Obama writes:
"And in that place [Lincoln Memorial], I think about America and those who built it.  This nation's founders, who somehow rose above petty ambitions and narrow calculations to imagine a nation unfurling across a continent.  And those like Lincoln and King, who ultimately laid down their lives in the service of perfecting an imperfect union.  And all the faceless, nameless men and women, slaves and soldiers and tailors and butchers, constructing lives for themselves and their children and grandchildren, brick by brick, rail by rail, calloused hand by calloused hand, to fill in the landscape of our collective dreams.
"It is that process I wish to be a part of.
"My heart is filled with love for this country."

Today, January 21, Barack Obama will place his hand not only on President Lincoln's bible but also on freedom-rights advocate Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bible to be sworn in at his official inauguration ceremony.

~Barack Obama (b. August 4, 1961) author of two New York Times Bestsellers: Dreams from My Father, 1995 and The AUDACITY of HOPE, 2006, Random House.

View From Our Window ~

Cupid Reading

"The audacity of hope ~
"That was the best of the American spirit, I thought ~ having the audacity to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary that we could restore a sense of community to a nation torn by conflict; the gall to believe that despite personal setbacks, the loss of a job or an illness in the family or a childhood mired in poverty, we had some control ~ and therefore responsibility ~ over our own fate.
"It was that audacity, I thought, that joined us as one people.  It was that pervasive spirit of hope that tied my own family's story to the larger American story, and my own story to those of the voters I sought to represent."

Obama thinks about what Benjamin Franklin wrote to his mother, explaining why he had devoted so much of his time to public service:  "I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than, He died rich."
Obama writes, "That's what satisfies me now, I think ~ being useful to my family and the people who elected me, leaving behind a legacy that will make our children's lives more hopeful than our own."

~  BARACK OBAMA, The AUDACITY of HOPE, 2006. THOUGHTS ON RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN DREAM, Random House, Inc..

It was said that Franklin Roosevelt was, "The best newspaperman who has ever been President of the United States."*

" 'The White House school of journalism,' Raymond Clapper, one of the most distinguished of Washington reporters, labeled the entire operation.
"Every day there were two or three stories coming out of the White House.  He intended to make the whole federal government his, make it respond to his whim and vision, he did so, and in that struggle he became this century's prime manipulator of the new and increasingly powerful modern media.  Thirty and forty years later, politicians like John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson would study how Franklin Roosevelt had handled the press, it was a textbook course in manipulation.

"In another time he [Roosevelt] might have seemed overbearing, but in the midst of the Depression when the nation had lost its faith, it took comfort in the fact that he was so sure of his destiny and his role.  His destiny would become theirs.

"He was the greatest news maker that Washington had ever seen. He came at a time when the society was ready for vast political and economic change, all of it enhancing the power of the President and the federal government, and he accelerated that change.  The old order had collapsed, old institutions and old myths had failed; he would create the new order.  In the new order, government would enter the everyday existence of almost all its citizens, regulating and adjusting their lives.  Under him Washington became the focal point, it determined how people worked, how much they made, what they ate, where they lived."

~ The Powers That Be, David Halberstam, American Journalist, Pulitzer Prize (1934 - 2007)Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
~* Heywood Broun.

Today, January 20, 2013, Barack Obama will be sworn in for a second term in office as President of the United States of America. 

"Lincoln was visibly nervous.  He was wearing a new black suit and sporting a neatly clipped beard. . .
"Lincoln unrolled the manuscript of his inaugural address.  He put on his steel-rimmed spectacles and faced the sunlit crowd below.  Thousands of people jammed the broad square in front of the Capital, waiting to hear the new president speak.
"Four months had passed since Lincoln's election in November.  During that time, seven Southern states had left the Union, and four more were about to join them.  In February, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi had been sworn in as president of the Confederate States of America.  Now, with the Union collapsing, the defiant South was preparing for war.
"Congressional leaders had tried to find a compromise plan that would hold the Union together.  But the Southerners would not budge from their demands."

~ excerpt from Chapter five, Lincoln, A Photobiography, by Russell Freedman.Clarion Books, 1987.

On Monday, January 21, 2013, The 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, will place his hand on the Lincoln bible and be sworn in at his second inauguration.

For a complete list of U.S. presidents, including Name, Term, Vice-Pres., Party, Congress, House Majority & Senate Majority:
http://australianpolitics.com/united-states-of-america/president/list-of-presidents-of-the-united-states

Inauguration Day ~ March 4, 1861

"Washington looked like an armed camp.  Cavalry and artillery had been clattering through the streets all morning.  Troops were everywhere.  Rumors of assassination plots, of Southern plans to seize the capital and prevent the inauguration, had put the army on the alert.
Shortly after noon, the carriage bearing President James Buchanan and President-elect Abraham Lincoln bounced over the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, heading for Capitol Hill.  Infantrymen lined the parade route.  Army sharpshooters crouched on nearby rooftops.  Soldiers surrounded the Capitol building, and plainclothes detectives mingled with the crowds.  On a hill overlooking the Capitol, artillerymen manned a line of howitzers and watched for trouble."

Tomorrow:  More of Russell Freedman's LINCOLN A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY, Clarion Books, 1987.

Henry D. Thoreau ~

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

~ Henry D. Thoreau (Waldon, published in 1854) "Where I lived, and What I lived for."

H. D. Thoreau Memorial at Waldon*

*Photo source:  Wikipedia

Thought for Today ~

"I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.  It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautified; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.  Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

~ Henry D. Thoreau (1817 - 1862) A Fully Annotated Edition Walden, Yale University, 2004.  Edited & annotated by J. S. Cramer, curator of collections, The Thoreau Institute Walden Woods.

Tomorrow:  Thoreau tells us why he went to the woods to live.

READING ~

Author John Passfield

Thursday, January 17, 1:00 p.m.

"Coffee Pot's Always on..."

Everyone Welcome ~ no admission

Note:  Local author John Passfield has a new book, Babe Ruth.  Sports fans won't want to miss this one.  We hope to bring to you details and front cover image.

(To our Readers:  The Neat Little Bookshop blog has always included photographs and illustrations.  Of late, you may have noticed an odd repetition.  That is because something happened when we agreed to purchase additional storage from Goggle's Blogspot.  Suddenly, the only photos available for posting are those from earlier posts.  We are working to remedy the problem.) 

 This is Ontario* by Katherine Hale
Chapter II ~ Grand River Valley

Her Majesty's Church of the Mohawks

2012 Addition to Accomodate a Lift

* Ryerson Press, Toronto. Copyright, Canada, 1937.  Photos:  lbwalker, 2012.

Word Watching ~

The origin of words or phrases is always fascinating.  The label "peeping tom" comes from a seventeenth-century embellishment of the story of Lady Godiva's naked horseback ride in the year 1057.

Almost certainly an apocryphal tale, the story has it that Lady Godiva had pleaded with her husband, Leofric, English nobleman and Earl, to lower the taxes on the people of Coventry.  He agreed only if she would ride naked through the town's market place.

The seventeen-year-old Godiva called her husband's bluff.  However, she had previously made a pact with the townspeople that they would remain indoors behind closed shutters if they wanted their taxes lowered.  Everyone complied except a tailor by the name of Tom.  "This prurient citizen peeped through his curtains, drawing upon himself instant calamity by an unspecified agent; he was struck blind or in some versions dead."

Tailor Tom left a legacy to the English language, the phrase, "peeping Tom."

~ Source: The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman General Editor, 1985.

The Beauty of Things ~
by Robinson Jeffers*

To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things ~ earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars ~
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality ~
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant ~ to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry,
The rest's diversion:  those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing:  reasons, but not the reason.

*American poet ( Jan. 10, 1887 ~ Jan. 20, 1962)  ~ The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, Stanford Univ. Press, 1988.

Thoughts on Writing ~

"Good writers work themselves physically.  Melville and Sandburg did farm chores.  H.L. Menken, William Carlos Williams, and Edna St. Vincent Millay all gardened.  Malcolm Cowley saws wood.  And Robinson Jeffers did stonework as a daily ritual, adding one room after another to the house he had built himself in Carmel, California, with huge stones he hauled up from the beach below.  I like the image that routine suggests ~ Jeffers struggling to catch flighty words in the morning and lifting heavy stones in the afternoon.  It's as if the one activity gave substance and form to the other."

~ Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Introduction, Writers in Residence. The Viking Press, 1981.

Banks of The Grand ~ Mohawk Chapel Brantford ON

Authors:
H. Mellville (Moby Dick)
C. Sanburg (Three Pulitzer Prizes)
H. L. Mencken (Happy Days)
Wm. Williams (The Red Wheelbarrow)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (Pulitzer Prize for Poetry)
Malcolm Cowley (WW 1 Correspondent, writer)
Robinson Jeffers (Poet, environmentalist)

"The best place for a writer to work is in his head," remark attributed to Ernest Hemingway.


(To our readers:  The only photos currently available through Blogspot are previously published ones.)

Thought for Today on the Art of Writing ~

"A pretty good way to make a living, you might think ~ to be free to frolic away the afternoons of your life.  But you mustn't be fooled.  Anyone who has ever tried to write knows that you don't just sit down and bang it out.  It is necessary first to seethe and torment yourself.
"Robert Frost may have written many of his poems at single sittings, as he boasted, but weeks of reflection, if not a lifetime, went into them first.  An idea must have a chance to work its way out of the brain and into the viscera before it goes down on the page." ~ C. Lehmann-Haupt, Introduction, Writers in Residence.

~ Glynne Robinson Betts, Writers in Residence, American Authors at Home, The Viking Press, 1981.

Tomorrow:  How do good writers help this process along?

Thursday, January 17
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

PUBLIC DESIGN WORKSHOP

for the Cayuga Streetscape Plan

Upstairs in the Cayuga Arena

for details contact:  Mike Evers, Mgr. Planning & Development, Haldimand County

905-318-5732 ext. 204 or mevers@haldimandcounty.on.ca

This is an important development that will affect all of us.  Let's support our local municipality in their planning for the downtown business section of Cayuga.

We've come a long way ~

From a "shelf" in a marketplace on Cayuga Street, we are now several rooms on the main thoroughfare.

Thank you to our bookshop family and friends who have supported us, made this quiet corner a place to be.

We look forward to new adventures and more conversation.  "The coffee pot's always on..."  Thursday, January 17, 1:00 p.m. will be our first Round Table Reading in the new year.  There are more topics than hours!  Everyone welcome.  Admission:  A Smile.

~ John & Lorna

Anger, frustration, violence dominate our modern news media ~

Gavin De Becker writes in his book, Gift of Fear*:

"If we studied any other creature in nature and found the record of intraspecies violence that human beings have, we would be repulsed by it.  We'd view it as a great perversion of natural law ~ but we wouldn't deny it."

"As we stand on the tracks, we can only avoid the oncoming train if we are willing to see it and willing to predict that it won't stop.  But instead of improving the technologies of prediction, America improves the technologies of conflict:  guns, prisons, SWAT teams, karate classes, pepper spray, stun guns, Tasers, Mace.  And now more than ever, we need the most accurate predictions.  Just think about how we live:  We are searched for weapons before boarding a plane, visiting city hall, seeing a television show taping, or attending a speech by the president.  Our government buildings are surrounded by barricades, and we wrestle through so-called tamper-proof packaging to get a couple aspirin.  All of this was triggered by the deeds of fewer than ten dangerous men who got our attention by frightening us.  What other quorum in American history, save those who wrote our constitution, could claim as much impact on our day-to-day lives?  Since fear is so central to our experience, understanding when it is a gift ~ and when it is a curse ~ is well worth the effort."

~ *Gift of Fear - Survival Signals That Protect us From Violence, Little, Brown & Co., Canada, Ltd., 1997. De Becker is a three-time presidential appointee changing the way the U.S. gov't. evaluates threats.

(Apologies - Pictures currently unavailable through Blogspot.  Hopefully to be resolved.)

"Two Bald Eaglets home at Taquanyah" ~ Dunnville Chronicle, June 25, 1986

Two, six-week-old bald eagles were carefully released from crates at the top of a thirty-foot high tower.  "In two months they will be flying freely, huge and magnificent, above the marsh."

In the article, a photo of the late Bruce Duncan, interpreter at Taquanyah Nature Centre, proudly displaying the crates being removed from a Ministry of Natural Resources vehicle and hoisting them to the top of five telephone poles where the man-made eagles' nest would serve as the eagles new home.
There was a great effort in the mid-eighties to re-introduce the bald eagle, then an endangered species, to southern Ontario.  This was a combined effort by The Grand River Conservation Authority, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, World Wildlife Fund, Hamilton Naturalists' Club and Ontario Hydro.



Simcoe Reformer



That was Haldimand in 1986.  Sadly, in 2013 we ruthlessly destroy an eagles' nest built by these magnificent birds themselves.

Environmentalist David Suzuki encouraged and endorsed the Ontario Green Energy Act, 2009.  He stated in a recently televised interview that he believes that the intended job creations are happening.

Read Dirty Business, The Reality of Ontario's Rush to Wind Power, available at The Neat Little Bookshop. $12.99.

One wonders what Suzuki would say about the eagle nest that was destroyed under police surveillance on Sunday to make way for wind turbines in the Fisherville, Haldimand County, area.



(Apologies:  Only images previously posted are currently available through Blogspot.  We are working to remedy the problem.)

Thought for Today ~
by Emily Dickinson

Nature is what we see,
The Hill, the Afternoon ~
Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumblebee,
Nay ~ Nature is Heaven.

Nature is what we hear,
The Bobolink, the Sea ~
Thunder, the Cricket ~
Nay, ~ Nature is Harmony.

Nature is what we know
But have no art to say,
So impotent our wisdom is
To Her simplicity.

~ Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems (American poet, d. May 15, 1886, age of 56.) Gramercy Books, Random House, 1993.

"Nature is Harmony"

(Photos from files, lbw ~ Hamilton Escarpment. Click on photo for larger image.)

Six Honest Servingmen
by Rudyard Kipling*

I keep six honest servingmen;
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest,
I let them rest from nine till five,
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men:
But different folk have different views:
I know a person small ~
She keeps ten million servingmen,
Who get no rest at all
She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes ~
One million Hows, two million Wheres
And seven million Whys!

~ The World Treasury of Children's Literature III, Little Brown, 1985.
* Rudyard Kipling (Dec. 30 - Jan. 18, 1936) English author, poet.

In The Neat Little Bookshop, we like to think that there is something for everyone.  Our pride is in providing reasonably priced books, paperback and hardcover, on a wide-range of interesting and popular topics.  Books are shelved in categories.  Alphabetical by author, where appropriate.

Each and every book is carefully checked and cleaned ~ whether it needs it or not.  Most books are like-new.  Local authors are new.   Books that don't meet our standards are donated to various charities where they continue to live useful lives.* 

Categories include contemporary fiction, fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, mysteries, true crime, westerns, romance, history, military, biographies, cultural, classics, Canadiana, travel, hobbies, art, nature, inspirational, health, science and a separate corner for teens and children.

With the exception of Clearance Books, books purchased in The Neat Little Bookshop can be returned for a small exchange credit.  Please note:  we do not accept great volumes of unknown books at the door.  A list of local charities is available at the desk.

Wishing everyone a wonderful New Year of good health, prosperity and happy hours surrounded by family and friends.

* Any musty, smoky or dirty books accidentally in our world are promptly recycled.  None go to landfills.

Smile for Today ~

"The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year."
~ John Foster Dulles (1888 - 1859) U.S. Secretary of State, '53 -59.

"You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."
~ Zig Ziglar (Nov. 6 - Nov. 28, 2012) U.S. author, motivational speaker.

"Congratulate yourselves if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) American essayist, poet.

"The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything  ~ and it works."
~ William Strong

~ Treasury of Wit & Wisdom, Reader's Digest, 2006.

Word Watching ~

Lavender Field

"Tussie Mussie" or Nosegay n. a small bunch of flowers, a posy.*  ("Tussie Mussie" isn't in my Canadian Oxford Dictionary.) The traditional nosegay was so called because it was carried close to the nose to disguise foul smells from the city drains and crowded places.  A drop or two on a tissue can have the same effect.

It has been suggested that herbs were used to sweeten the straw in baby Jesus' manger.

It is during the Canadian winter that some of us begin dreaming of our herb garden.  Nothing compares with live herbs within sight of the kitchen window ~ unless it is indoors in the kitchen.  (Not the fresh kind in see-through cartons purchased in the organic section, I mean pots on the windowsill. lbw)

Whatever the form, a few common herbs ~ rosemary (my favorite), lavender another ~ in the kitchen close to the nose can brighten a day.

~ *The Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

~ Using Herbs In The Home, Anthony Gardiner, 1996. Promotional Reprint Co., Ltd., London England for Chapters in Canada.  Apologies to the lavender-field photographer, photo saved long ago, origin unknown.

Thoughts on the Future ~

Science Fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, gave us his thoughts on the future:

"...inventions [i.e. machines, cars] which induce you to behave immorally are indeed with us and are beginning to cause a hell of a lot of trouble in the cultures of the world.  The very countries that made fun of us are now going through the traffic jams and the smog and the murder on the highways...
I've written an article on the steps we have to take to change, rebuild and rethink a lot of things.  We're on our way there.  A lot of big corporations are interested in this, and we're going to have corporate responsibility on many levels.  We're going to build a lot of small towns again, ones which work in new terms.  They'll be humanistic, technological small towns of the future which will have all kinds of travel in it, ways of getting around without using cars.  It will have so many textures that we need, or think we need, as educated hedonists of the future.  There are two or three now being built, and when they work there will be hundreds, and then we'll get people out of the big cities.  The big cities will be partially blown up and replotted into gardens, and they'll be made to work again."

~ Interview with Lawrence Grobel, Endangered Species, Da Capo Press, 2001.

(Ray Bradbury never drove a car and his fear of flying kept him from being a world traveller.  He often lectured high school and college students on how to make a better future.  He spoke to futurists on how not to forget the past and present.  He consulted with architects and city planners on how to turn cities into parks and rebuild communities more feasible for living.) Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012) American Sci-fi, fantasy, horror writer.

Thoughts on A New CanadianYear ~

"Despite the tough times, compared with just about any other land on earth, Canada still is blessed with the mandate of heaven."

~ Peter C. Newman, Canadian author, columnist.

"What many Canadians do not seem to realize is that in most countries of this world people would say about Canada: 'Boy, I wish we had their problems and not ours!'"

~ Arkadi Tcherkassov, Russian commentator, 'Our Man in Moscow.' Grainews, July 1992.

'You've got to keep moving.  What you're most proud of today is quite likely to be scrapped five years hence."

~ Edgar G. Burton, merchandiser, interviewed by R.E.Knowles , The Toronto Star, 22 Jan. 1937.

"Luck is an opportunity seized."

~ Roy Thomson, Lord Thomson of Fleet, quoted by Peter C. Newman, 'The Table Talk of Roy Thomson,"  Maclean's, Dec. 1971.

~Famous Lasting Words/Great Canadian Quotations.  John Robert Colombo, Douglas & McIntyre Ltd., 2000.