Think Spring! [Photo:  May 2005 files lbw]

Today -  SOUP 'A' BOWL 2013

Bring a bag of non-perishable groceries to support our Haldimand Food Banks and for $1, receive a bowl of soup donated by our local restaurants.

LOCATION:  HALDIMAND MOTORS' NEW BUILDING
5th ANNUAL SOUP 'A' BOWL Friday, Jan. 31st.  5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Follow Haldimand Motors on Facebook



Lookout on Ouse Street [files 2012 lbw]

Neat L'l Bookshop readers will recognize our favourite "lookout" on the Grand ~ (may not recogize the latest village artwork.)

[There is always humour...]

To our dear Florida Friends ~

I STARTED early, took my dog,
     And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,

And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground upon the sands.

But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,
And past my apron and my belt,
And past my bodice too,

And he--he followed close behind;
I felt his silver heel
Upon my ankle,--then my shoes
Would overflow with pearl.

Until we met the solid town,
No man he seemed to know;
And bowing with a mighty look
At me, the sea withdrew.

~ Emily Dickinson
COLLECTED POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Chatham River Press Classics, 1983

[Photo:  James N. Allan Park, lbw files.]

Gerald Clark, Canadian journalist, takes on a story ~

After the second WWII when full-scale passenger service, by ship, resumed.  Ocean liners, which had carried hundreds of thousands of troops in jammed quarters during six years of war, were now refitted on a luxury scale.

Clark's assignment was to travel from Montreal to Southampton on the Canadian Pacific's Empress of Scotland, and return.  He was to write about the kind of people who now enjoyed peacetime travel.  One man's story never left him.

A man called "Boots" had worked all his life shining shoes--women's shoes, men's shoes, children's shoes.  During the war, he did it ashore.  Back at sea, he was happily shining shoes again "while the ship rolled and creaked."

The journalist followed "Boots" night after night as he picked up and cleaned the footwear that waited outside many cabin doors.  "Not once did I think of asking whether he knew tedium.

It was plain that "Boots" was as fascinated by the one shoe now in his palm as he must have been tens of thousands of pairs ago. "

"Look here," he said, pointing to the heel. "You see where the right side is worn much more than the other side.  The man who wears this shoe has no fears of life."

"How did "Boots" know?  He just knew, that's all.  Experience had given him this insight, so he could judge the character of an individual--an individual he never met in person--by the way the heel or the sole sloped.  "Boots" analyzed every piece of footwear this way.  He administered a magnificent shine.  He was terribly proud of his work and he was never bored."

~ Gerald Clark, NO MUD ON THE BACK SEAT, Memoirs of a reporter. Robert Davies Publishing, 1995.

The title reads:  "...a terrific treat on a winter's morning."

Van Gogh rendered several versions of his "mad" sunflowers ~ two of which currently hang side-by-side in a special exibit in London's National Gallery.

Journalist Alastair Sooke, writing for the British newspaper The Telegraph, features the Van Gogh exibit in an article, 25 January, 2014/January 27.  Comments are mixed.


www.nationalgallery.org
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artreview/105.org

Follow Vincent Willem Van Gogh or Van Gogh Museum on www.Facebook.com

Alastair Sooke The Telegraph
Photo: Julian Simmonds

Our Mom's Doughnuts ~ (You asked)

What does this heritage landmark have to do with Mom's doughnuts?  Reta* grew up in East Seneca, Haldimand County.

1 heaping cup of brown sugar
1 tsp. melted butter
2 eggs
1 cup rich milk
2 cups or more flour
1 tsp. soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
Nutmeg if desired

Roll dough. Cut with round donut cutter [cutter leaves hole in centre]. Save centers and odd-shaped dough (don't reroll).

Have lard hot - almost smoking to start.

Dunk donuts including holes and random shapes in very hot lard.  Turn. [Random fantasy shapes and centers were popular with kids and adults alike.]

Mom was pretty famous for these donuts.  You will be too!

*Reta Turnbull Melick
[For larger image click on photo - lbw files]

           
BOOKSHOP CLOSED
                   TODAY DUE TO WEATHER

Visit www.robertburns.org for everything from Tartan ties to tankards and kilts!  Happy Robbie Burns Day.

Robbie Burns told his own story "ingenuously and forcibly" in a letter to Dr. Moore.

[The first chapter of The Poetical Works of Robert Burns* consists of Burns's autobiography.]

"But before leaving my native country for ever, I resolved to publish my poems.  I weighed my productions as impartially as was in my power:  I thought they had merit; and it was a delicious idea that I should be called a clever fellow, even though it should never reach my ears--a poor negro-driver; or, perhaps, a victim to that inhospitable clime, and gone to the world of spirits.  I can only say, that pauvre inconnu  as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour.  It ever was my opinion that the mistakes and blunders, both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves.

To know myself had been all along my constant study--I weighed myself alone--I balanced myself with others--I watched every means of information, to see how much ground I occupied as a man and as a poet--

I studied assiduously Nature's design in my formation--where the lights and shades in my character were intended.  I was pretty confident my poems would meet with some applause; but, at the worst, the roar of the Atlantic would deafen the voice of censure, and the novelty of West Indian scenes make me forget neglect.  I threw off six hundred copies, of which I had got subscriptions for about three hundred and fifty.  My vanity was highly gratified by the reception I met with from the public; and besides, I pocketed, all expenses deducted, nearly twenty pounds."

*Edited by John & Angus MacPherson.  The publication date is not stated; however, a personal inscription:  January 7, 1895.

To A Haggis

[The haggis is a dish peculiar to Scotland, composed of minced offal of mutton, mixed with oatmeal and suet, and boiled in a sheep's stomach.  The following composition was first published in the Scots Magazine for January, 1787.]

FAIR fa' your honest sonsie face,                                                befall, plump
Great chieftain o' the puddin' race!
Aboon them a' ye tak' your place,
                  Painch, tripe, or thairm:                                              paunch, gut
Weel are ye wordy of a grace                                                       worthy
                  As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill                                                 would
                    In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
                    Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic labour dight,                                                    wipe
And cut you up wi' ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright
                     Like ony ditch;
And then, oh what a glorious sight,
                     Warm-reekin', rich!

First three verses taken from "To A Haggis" ~ THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS
edited by John and Angus MacPherson, London: WALTER SCOTT.

Date published not stated.  Personal inscription January 7, 1895.

           

Before writing TheFountainhead, author Ayn Rand spent six months working, without pay, in an architect's office. "Ayn's friends were aware that her social shyness had made it difficult for her to approach a stranger and request a favor; but they also knew that when her work was involved, she allowed nothing to interfere."
Lawyer, Ely Jacques Kahn, was the only one to know that Ayn's real purpose was research for a novel.

Source:  The Passion of Ayn Rand A Biography by Barbara Branden, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1986.

Cayuga Downtown Businesses ~

The Cayuga retailers have planned for you an attraction ~ Friday & Saturday, January 31 - February 1.  Prizes, specials ~ smiles are free.

Watch for the details in a flyer in your mailbox or visit Cayuga Chamber of Commerce on Facebook.

[Photo:  The old Cayuga P.O. - files lbw]

On Writing ~

Smile for Today ~

"Why don't you write books people can read?"
~ Nora Joyce to her husband James

"The covers of this book are too far apart."
~ Ambrose Bierce

"I find television very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."
~ Groucho Marx

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
~Flannery O'Connor

~ I always have a quotation for everything--it saves original thinking,* A COLLECTION OF QUOTABLE QUOTES, AURA, 2004.

*Dorothy L Sayers

Business as Usual in Cayuga ~
The river is frozen over.  Most of the action is on the riverbank and on the new structure.

Highway traffic is flowing freely over the old bridge.  Visit the village and watch this amazing marvel of engineering rise--parallel with the old.  When completed, the old will be torn down and the new moved into place.

[Photo: January 21 lbw]

South of The New Bridge ~
Ouse Street Looking South

Sign reads:  "BEWARE OF MOVING EQUIPMENT"

[Click on photo for larger image.]

Progress ~ Tuesday January 21

The New Bridge over The Grand River



Normandale - Norfolk



"The surest path to the realm of the Little People is the one taken with gentle steps and an open heart.

For the fairy folk are full of nature's wisdom ~ they can sense a human heart-beat from a mile away."

~  HOW TO SEE FAIRIES Penned & Illustrated by Charles Van Sandwyk, SMITHMARK BOOKS, 1999.

[Photo:  files lbw]

 A MURMUR in the trees to note,
    Not loud enough for wind;
A star not far enough to seek,
    Nor near enough to find;

A long, long yellow on the lawn,
    A hubbub as of feet;
Not audible, as ours to us,
    But dapperer, more sweet;

A hurrying home of little men
    To houses unperceived, ~
All this, and more, if I should tell,
    Would never be believed.

Of robins in the trundle bed
    How many I espy
Whose nightgowns could not hide the wings,
    Although I heard them try.

But then I promised ne'er to tell;
    How could I break my word?
So go your way and I'll go mine, ~
    No fear you'll miss the road.

~ Emily Dickenson (1830 - 1886)

COLLECTED POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Chatham River Press, 1983.

(Note:  When the first set of Emily's poetry was published in 1890, it was "hailed as a literary event" and prompted the second series in 1891.  The poet who was deemed "unorthodox, idiosyncratic, and too delicate was now a poet of vision."  Her poetry was written without the thought of publication, and solely by way of expression of the writer's own mind.  Poetry which Emerson called 'the Poetry of the Portfolio.")

The L'l Bookshop will be closed on Friday, January 17.  We will open again on Saturday at 10:30 a.m.  Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience.

A big thank you to the Third Thursday group of folks who shared stories in the bookshop today.  A special thank you to Doris Kienitz and her father Alfred for generously sharing with us their personal family experiences.  Doris is the author of East Germany and the Escape: Kitchen Table Memoirs.  Friesen Press.

Follow "Doris Kienitz East Germany Escape" on Facebook.

Note:  Thank you for bearing with us while our server is frequently and sporadically not available;  our software, programs, files -- including e-mail messages and addresses -- are somewhere.  Somewhere out of order.  (I am assured that they are safe!)  If we have not replied to your inquiries or followed up on promised information, we are working on it and hope to be up and running soon. ~ lbw

From Alice Mason ~

Friendship is that rarest of treasures to hold

It cannot be purchased with mountains of gold.

It's being protective when hope tumbles down

A fault that's forgiven, a smile for a frown.

Encouragement offered when the going is rough...

It's a hand set to help when the job is too tough.

Friendship is the essence of faith, deep and strong.

It's a poem unwritten...

A beautiful song.

Alice Mason (1904 - 1971) American abstract painter

    "Nature is a catchment of sorrows." ~ Maxine Kumin (b. 1925) U. S. Poet Laureate & author.  Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.  Robert Frost medal.

~ Harper Book of Quotations, Robert Fitzhenry. 1993.

[Photo:  Dunnville resident, Diane Young.]

Doris Kienitz and her father, Alfred, are coming to The Neat L'l Bookshop

THURSDAY, JANUARY 16, 1:00 p.m.

Many of you know the author of East Germany the ESCAPE, Kitchen Table Memoirs*, and her father, from their appearances throughout Ontario presenting a true-life act of the family's harrowing escape from East Germany.




[Photo:  Authors' Book Fair,  Lighthouse Festival Theatre, Port Dover. April 2013. lbw]

*Friesen Press

On Another's Sorrow
~ William Blake

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?

Can I see a falling tear,
And not feel my sorrow's share?
Can a father see his child
Weep, nor be with sorrow filled?

Can a mother sit and hear
An infant groan, an infant fear?
No, no! never can it be!
Never, never can it be!




From:  Songs of Innocence, William Blake (1757 - 1827) English poet.

Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

 ~ W. B. Yeats (1865 - 1939)  The Lake Isle of Innisfree, 1888.

[Photo:  W.B.Y. 1920.  Wikipedia]

On Books ~

"Books were what you did when it was raining; they were the entertainment, they were the escape, they were the extended family, and I read them all, even when they weren't supposed to be for children."

~ Margaret Atwood, referring to books in summer cottages, 'Why I Write,' The Toronto Star, 5 June 1993.

"A home or a people without good books is something more than waste; in short, an empty brain is the devil's workshop."

~ John Britnell, bookseller and son of the founder of Albert Britnell Book Store, Toronto..

"A good book is the best of friends, the same today & forever."

~ Martin Farquhar Tupper, English writer, poet.

Marconi's Anticipations

BIG thank you to Scott for the hours of expert service on my PC.  Everyone out there will understand when I explain that everything was wiped clean, saved in two places and now I am working in the next century ~ everything is updated.  Days later, I am trying to find files.  Prompts are still worrisome - the latest:  "Unable to resolve the server DNS address..."  Nope!  Don't know what a DNS server is.  All I know is that pictures are not available for blogging.

Most troublesome ~ my e-mail neatlittlebookshop@gmail.com  is not accessible.  THAT, I am advised is in use and I am advised to choose another address.

Not unlike the following:

"Shortly before mid-day I placed the single earphone to my ear and started listening. . . The answer came at 12:30 when I heard, faintly but distinctly, pip-pip-pip.  I handed the phone to Kemp:  'Can you hear anything?' I asked.  'Yes,' he said, 'the letter S' ~ he could hear it.  I knew then that all my anticipations had been justified."

"...Pip-pip-pip...!"    "S..."

~ Guglielmo Marconi, Italian-born inventor of wireless telegraphy, describing the reception of a signal in Morse Code.
Source:  FAMOUS LASTING WORDS, John Robert Colombo.Douglas & McIntyre Ltd. 2000.

Smile for Today ~ The Boneless Wonder

"I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit...which I most desired to see was the one described as 'The Boneless Wonder'...My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench."

~  Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

Local author, Brad Smith, released the third title in his Virgil Cain series ~ Shoot the Dog. While Cain's team of percherons are hired to appear in a movie being shot in the area, he unwittingly gets drawn into a troublesome setting.

Shoot the Dog, Simon & Shuster, 2013, available in The Neat Little Bookshop: new hardcover with dustcover: $26. tx. incl.

[Photos:  the author with fans Margaret Rose of Dunnville and Bob Allen of Toronto. Photos courtesy of Sig Rose.]

Ice Over the Grand

"I propose that we use the term "koob,"  book spelt backwards, to describe [junk reading]... I've sold a lot of koobs in my day and plan to continue to do so, but I do respect books and I think a distinction must be made."

~ Jack McClelland (1922 - 2004) President of McClelland & Stewart, interviewed in 1973, quoted by James King in Jack:  A Life with Writers, The Story of Jack McClelland (1999)

"When I started out as a scribbler, something like fifty years ago, you could fit all of Canada's quality writers into a Volkswagen and still have room to pick up a hitchhiker.  These happy days we could just about fill a bus."

~ Mordecai Richler (Jan. 27, 1931 - July 3, 2001) Canadian novelist, essayist, screenwriter, quoted in the National Post, Dec. 11, 1999.

Smile For Today ~  Peter C. Newman's description of Canadian writing in the fifties.

"...the status of Canadian writers ranked somewhere between taxidermists and rat exterminators.  Their works ~ often concerning the mating habits of beavers, the memoirs of forlorn women braving life on the frontier, or the history of the North-West Mounted Police ~ were relegated to a section labelled 'CANADIANA' at the back of the library, quite a festive word for such a dreary collection.  'CANADIANA' was located between other sluggish sections such as 'CALLIGRAPHY' and 'CANNIBALISM,' ensuring that readers seldom ventured into those nether regions.  Groping through those dark shelves, I managed to read all of Hugh MacLennan, Donald Creighton, and Bruce Hutchison, even if my sense of national identity was not yet fully developed."

~ Peter C. Newman, Canadian author, journalist. (b. May 10, 1921) Here Be Dragons/ Telling Tales of People, Passion and Power, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2004.

The Road Not Taken
by ROBERT FROST

Two roads diverged in  a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ~
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost (March 26, 1874 - January 29, 1963) U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Wishing you health, happiness & prosperity in the new year...
The Neat L'l Bookshop