1000 lb of Pumpkin

&

Caledonia Fair Two Giants

730 lb of Pumpkin

"...a single-payer national health-care plan similar to those that exist in Europe and Canada..."
~President Barack Obama

"In 1993, President Clinton took a stab at creating a system of universal coverage, but was stymied.  Since then, the public debate has been deadlocked, with some on the right arguing for a strong dose of market discipline through Health Savings Accounts, others on the left arguing for a single-payer national health-care plan similar to those that exist in Europe and Canada, and experts across the political spectrum recommending a series of sensible but incremental reforms to the existing system.
"It's time we broke this impasse by acknowledging a few simple truths.
"Given the amount of money we spend on health care (more per capita than any other nation), we should be able to provide basic coverage to every single American."

"...deliver the best care in the most cost-effective manner.  In particular, the model plan would emphasize coverage of primary care, prevention, catastrophic care, and the management of chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes.  Overall, 10 percent of all patients account for 80 percent of the care..."

~ The AUDACITY of HOPE, THOUGHTS ON RECLAIMING THE AMERICAN DREAM,  Barack Obama, Crown Publishers, 2006. 

Meet us at the fair ~

Haldimand Stewardship Council
Haldimand & Area Woodlot Owners' Association

"It's hard to leave home, but we're managing to do it as a species regardless.  Pretty amazing."  ~ Chris Hadfield, Canadian retired astronaut b. 1959.  Global News w/CP & AP files.

Hadfield has his first book coming out this fall, A Guide to Life on Earth. Theme?  "To show how to make the impossible possible," said Random House.

 

Photos:  lbw

Each day brings an hour of magic.
Listen to it!
Things will whisper their secrets.
You will know
what fills the herbs with goodness,
makes days change into nights,
turns the stars
and brings the change of seasons.
When you have come to know
some of nature's wise ways
beware of your complacency
for you cannot be wiser than nature.
You can only be as wise
as any man will ever hope to be,
~ if you let it happen.

~ My Heart Soars by Chief Dan George

"The sunlight does not leave its marks on the grass.
So we, too, pass silently."

Excerpt from Brad Smith's Shoot the Dog ~

    "The movie takes place in the 1840s." the man named Robb said.  "I'm the director.  What do you call those horses?"
    "I call them Bob and Nelly," Virgil said.
    The one calling himself Levi uttered a soft puff of exasperation. "What kind of horses are they?"
    "Percherons."
    "And they are considered ...um...workhorses?" Robb asked.
    "Today they are," Virgil said.  "I wouldn't have called them that a week ago."
    Levi glanced at Robb.  "We need to talk to the owner.  This guy isn't getting it."
    Robb smiled at Virgil, then spoke slowly, as if explaining something to a child.  "We might want to hire these horses for the film.  You see, the movie takes place in the frontier days, when horses like these were commonly used for --" He stumbled then, searching for uses for bygone horses from bygone days.
    "For what?"  Virgil asked.
    "Well, for work."
    "You mean like pulling a plow, or yanking stumps, or hauling logs from the bush?"  Virgil asked. "Or taking the family into town in a buckboard, or pulling a cutter in the winter, or bringing hay into the barn?  You mean stuff like that?"

~ Shoot the Dog, Brad Smith.  Scribner, A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2013

Meet the author in The Neat L'l Bookshop on SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 ~ 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.  Everyone Welcome ~ Coffee pot's always on...

"Deep in the Core of Apple Country"  APPLE CRISP using Ida Red or Northern Spys (and a utensil resembling a miniature waggon wheel to section the apples into eighths.)

6 - 8 large tart apples, peeled & cored
1 t. cinnamon
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
1 c. flour
1 egg, beaten
1/2 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
chopped walnuts
1/2 c. melted butter

9x9x3" greased pan.  350 degrees for 40 min.
Mix the cinnamon & brown sugar; sprinkle apples with half.
Combine white sugar, flour, egg, salt & baking powder; spread over apples.
Sprinkle walnuts over this, then the remaining cinnamon mix.  Over the top, pour melted butter.

*This is the most tasty doggone apple recipe I ever came across." ~ Jack Michell, descendant of generations of apple growers.  (The Georgian Bay Fruit Growers)

~ Macdonald was late for Dinner ~ A Slice of Culinary Life in Early Canada Patricia Beeson, Broadview Press, 1993

To Autumn ~ William Blake

O AUTUMN, laden with fruit, and stained

With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit

Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,

And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe;

And all the daughters of the year shall dance!

Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.

..."The spirits of the air live on the smells

Of fruit; and joy, with pinions light, roves round

The gardens, or sits singing in the trees."

Thus sang the jolly Autumn as he sat;

Then rose, girded himself, and o'er the bleak

Hills fled from our sight; but left his golden load.

~ English poet ((1757 - 1827)

Appreciation to friends Sharon & Jamie Jackson

"Honk If You Love Peace and Quiet"

"How long have you been out there""  Linda asked.
Christine and I were sitting at the dinner table in Linda's elegant city home, the food eaten, the forks and knives together on the plates, a finger of wine left in our glasses...
"We were sure you wouldn't last, you know," said Linda.  "We thought you'd be back in the city within the year."
"Maybe we'll spend our old age here,"  I said, "once the work gets too heavy.  You know, reverse the trend."
"No regrets?  You don't miss being able to drop into a jazz bar on the spur of the moment?"

~ Michael Kluckner, Wise Acres/ Free-Range Reflections on the Rural Route.  Raincoast Books, 2000.

www.bradsmithbooks.com

Author, Brad Smith, coming to The Neat L'l Bookshop on SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m.

Brad Smith's Virgil Cain series led critics to compare his novels to those of Elmore Leonard's.
Don't miss the third book, Shoot the Dog.

*The author signing the second in the Virgil Cain series, Crow's Landing, at Flyers Cafe in Dunnville.

Grand River Cayuga

"YESTERDAY IS HISTORY.  TOMORROW IS MYSTERY.  TODAY IS A GIFT."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)  U.S. First Lady, humanitarian and diplomat, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, wife of Franklin Roosevelt.  Involved in a wide range of liberal causes, including civil and women's rights, she became a delegate to the United Nations after her husband's death in 1945, and, as chair of the UN Commission on Human Rights, played a major role in drafting the Declaration of Human Rights (1948)*

*Oxford Canadian Dictionary

Reconstructed Globe Theatre, London

Shakespeare's formal education ended at age 15.  He plunged into London's theater scene as an actor and writer in the late 1580s, and by 1611 he had written the most highly regarded collection of plays in history, including A Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Hamlet, Othello, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Many of our modern words and phrases can be attributed to the English Bard's pen, including "To be or not to be ~ that is the question," "Out damned spot!" "All the world's a stage," "Friends, Romans, countrymen," "Beware the ides of March," and "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Today in The Neat L'l Bookshop Neil Paul will share with us his attendance this summer at Othello.  Everyone welcome.  1:00 p.m. or whenever you can drop in!

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

"Sing all a green willow;
Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee,
Sing willow, willow, willow:
The fresh streams ran by her, and murmur'd her
moans;
Her salt tears fell from her, and soften'd the stones;~
Sing willow, willow, willow:
Sing all a green willow must be my garland."

~ Shakespeare's Othello, 1603 (?) [41].

Reminder:  The Neat L'l Bookshop Third Thursday, 19 SEPT. 1:00 p.m.  Neil Paul reading and discussion of Othello.

From Othello ~

"Her father lov'd me; oft invited me;
Still question'd me the story of my life
From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes
That I have pass'd.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days
To the very moment that he bade me tell it;
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,
Of being taken by the insoloent foe
And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence
And portance in my travel's history;
Wherein of antres vast and desarts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak, such was the process..."

~ Wm Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

The Neat L'l Bookshop is pleased to host an afternoon with Neil Paul and Third Thursday friends.  Topic:  Shakespeare's Othello.  Neil attended Othello this summer.  He brings to us his experience and readings of Shakespeare.  THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19. 1:00 p.m.  Everyone welcome.

"Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,
     That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;
Small have continual plodders ever won,
     Save base authority from others' books.
These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights
     That give a name to every fixed star,
Have no more profit of their shuning nights
     Than those that walk and wot not what they are." 84

"Assist me some extemporal god of rime, for I am sure
I shall turn sonneter.  Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio."
[192]

"He hath not fed of the dainties that are bred in a book;
he hath not eat paper, as it were; he hath not drunk
ink." IV.ii [25]

~ Shakespeare, Wm. (1564 - 1616) Love's Labour Lost

Our First Neat L'l Bookshop on Cayuga Street

When Thomas Wolfe (1900 - 1938) died, he left behind an eight-foot-high stack of unpublished manuscripts.  "If ever there was a writer who didn't need a biographer, that writer is Thomas Wolfe," said his editor, Maxwell Perkins.  Look Homeward, Angel, published in 1929, could be considered autobiography or pure fiction.  Wolfe himself wrote in his note to the reader, "If the writer has used the clay of life to make his book, he has only used what all men must, what none can keep from using."

~ Source:  WRITERS IN RESIDENCE, Glynne Robinson Betts, The Viking Press, 1981.

FALL CALENDAR FOR THIRD THURSDAYS:

• Sept. 19, 1:00pm:  Neil Paul Shakespeare's Othello
• Oct. 17, 1:30pm: Jill Marshall To the Arctic and Home Again
• Nov. 21, 1:00pm:  Alan Bishop WWI Poetry

Saturday, Sept. 28 Local Author, Brad Smith 1 - 3pm.
Brad will be signing his third novel in the Virgil Cain series.

The Neat Little Bookshop regular Saturday hours 10:30 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.  Come by.  We are tired today after a big night so the signs are still up:  BUY ONE GET ONE HALF PRICE.*

As well as BARGAIN BOOKS ~ Tables of clearance books. $1 - $5   Emptying the 'Narnia' Closet!


*of equal or lesser value.  With the exception of local author's new books.  

A Big Thank You...

to all those who came by last night after the Great Tricycle Race.  Congratulations to all the competitors and to the staff at Haldimand Motors for yet one more fantastic event.

A special thank you to John Edelman, Mark Gibson and co-workers who worked to include the small businesses in the village.  It was great to see the store lights on after dark!

Coming to the GREAT TRICYCLE RACE?  STAY afterwards to SHOP and SAVE between 9 - 11pm at the SUPER SALES in downtown Cayuga. Friday, September 13.  For details visit Haldimand Motors on Facebook.

"The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.  Let us spend our lives in conceiving then.  The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails."

~ Henry D. Thoreau, American author, naturalist, philosopher (1817 - 1862) Walden. 



29 Talbot Street The Neat Little Bookshop

"I still do not know what impels anyone sound of mind to leave dry land and spend a lifetime describing people who do not exist.  If it is child's play, an extension of make-believe ~ something one is frequently assured by persons who write about writing ~ how to account for the overriding wish to do that, just that, only that, and consider it as rational an occupation as riding a racing bike over the Alps?  Perhaps the cultural attache at a Canadian embassy who said to me "Yes, but what do you really do?" was expressing an adult opinion.  Perhaps a writer is, in fact, a child in disguise, with a child's lucid view of grown-ups, accurate as to atmosphere, improvising when it tries to make sense of adult behavior."
~ Mavis Gallant, The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant, Canadian Writer (b. August 11, 1922) A Douglas Gibson Book M&S, 1996.

Author Brad Smith will join us on Saturday, September 28 - 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. in The Neat Little Bookshop.  Brad will be signing his latest book, Shoot the Dog, the third book in the Virgil Cain series.  If you missed Brad's earlier titles, there will be some available.

www.bradsmithbooks.com or follow the author on Facebook: Brad Smith Author

Bookshop Fall Calendar
Third Thursdays:

Sept. 19, 1:00 pm  Neil Paul Shakespeare's Othello
Oct. 17, 1:30 pm  Jill Marshall To the Arctic and Home Again
Nov. 21, 1:00 pm  Alan Bishop World War I Poetry

Author Brad Smith ~ Brad will be signing his latest release, Shoot the Dog ~ third in the Virgil Cain series, Saturday, September 28, 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. 

"When you find the right people, you never let go.  The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times.  You have all the friends you want when things are going well."

~ James Lee Burke, American Author (b. 1936)

A Day at the Farm ~

"Done with error on page..."

To our Readers:  We feel it necessary to apologize for typos or errors. The problem lies with Blogspot.  Pleas for help go unheeded.

Each and every daily post is a game of round-about.  Text can be entered only if a photo is posted first.  (Sometimes we upload a random photo and remove.)   Navigating the text is only possible using the arrows.  Once done, editing is not possible.  Example:  the duplication of the word "his" in the previous post.  It is simply too round-about to start again!

"Abraham Lincoln in his his day was affectionately known as 'the rail spliter,' because of his prowess at this very tricky job.  Even in those times, snake rail fences meandered up hill and down dale.  They turned awkward corners adroitly, dodging boulders and huge trees.  Because of their sharp angles and interlocking joints they were strong and solid.  But against this, in harvest time they served the harvesters wonderfully well as eating and resting places in the hot weather."

~Harry Symons, Fences, The Ryerson Press, Toronto, 1958.

Country Roads

"Settlers soon enough learned to peel the bark off the fencing material, since, freed of bark and the moisture it held, the wood lasted much longer.
"The snake rail fence...was abandoned in favour of the straight rail because the boundary lines between farms, carelessly placed in pioneer days, were even more strictly defined as time went on."

~Harry Symons Fences, The Ryerson Press, 1958.

Nostalgic Photo of Previous Location 11B Cayuga St.

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.  Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others."

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."

~ Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626) Of Superstition.

"In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too;  to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line."

~ Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Where I lived, and what I lived for.

King Street and Ouse

A Tiny Island is visible where a busy King Street bridge once crossed the river.  The old village shops on King Street eventually became residential and the businesses are now located on Cayuga Street.   Grindstone Creek Gallery ~ noted for its beautiful brick archways ~ is the only shop on King Street today.  The owners, Kimberly and John Jeffrey appreciate the early Cayuga architecture.  They welcome historical photos and stories of the old village.

Photos:  lbw

"You are today where your thoughts have brought you;  you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you."
~ James Lane Allen (1849 - 1925) American novelist.

"And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough yourself.  A man should never think that.  My belief is that in life people will take you very much at your own reckoning."

~Anthony Trollope (1815 - 1882) Victorian English novelist, ch.32, The Warden (1855)

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!

~ Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) The Glory of the Garden.

"I keep six honest serving-men
   (They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
   And How and Where and Who."

~ Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936)

(Photo:  11B. Previous location of The Neat Little Bookshop on Cayuga Street.)