See you next Wednesday, MARCH 4th.

Denise Hart & Dan Romanoski

Love Trees?  Contact any of the dedicated stewards in your area.

Denise Hart of Haldimand Stewardship Council

www.hnstewardshipcouncils.org 

Greg Greer, Field Adviser with Trees Ontario ~ one of several guest speakers at PLANT TREES

Getting ready for PLANT TREES workshop are Stephan Prior, Chair of Land Care Niagara; Michelle Martin, LCN staff and Denise Hart, Resource Manager HNStewardship Council

Stephan Prior, Michelle Martin & Denise Hart

Smile for Today ~

"If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast." ~ Ernest Hemingway

"I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller."
~ Michael Palin (b. 1965) English actor, writer, known for Monty Python.  (b. 1965).

"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable.  It is designed to make its own people comfortable."
~ Clifton Fadiman, (1904 - 1999) American writer, author, T.V. & radio personality. [Opinion:  Can we post this in every airport? lbw]

"Our desire to find or create the perfect home can be sentimental or practical; aesthetic, or deeply emotional.  The compulsion is often fierce, obsessive, even reckless.  The longing emerges out of a private mythology, formed from dreams dreamt long ago in childhood, from images found in children's books, and in reveries of the past.  "Home" takes imaginary form as a place where people are kind, where children flourish, where profound ceremonies are celebrated.  At home there is warmth, light, and comfort.  There is food in abundance; full tables give shape to our idea of holidays.  To these quiet, essential human imaginings, the paintings of Canadian artists offer their own special tribute."

~ Joan Murray, Oshawa, Ontario.  CELEBRATING HOME ~ A Collection of Canada's Best-Loved Painters, Prospero Books, 2008.

Journals can be as sophisticated or as simple as the writer chooses.  In Sophia MacNab's journal she wrote, "I have now finished writing this book through and it has taken me nearly seven months.  I am twenty one.  My dear Momma told me to keep one always and if I keep it until I am twenty one I will have written thirteen volumes.  I only hope that I may have the perseverance to continue it," Sophia wrote on July 8th., 1846.

Some of us may feel like Sophia did on one particular day:

"I think is would do almost as well to write one day and copy all the next from it, there is so little variety....it is useless to give such a long detail of each day, so I am merely going to put that we went through the usual 'routine'."

THE DIARY of SOPHIE MACNAB, written at Dundurn Castle, Hamilton, 1846 age 13.  W.L. Griffi Printing, 1968.

Study in Gardens

"I run back into the woods with their serene perplexities, their fathomless deeps and singing fresh green tips.  These days when the sun is bright they just chuckle with glory and joy."

"There are themes everywhere, something sublime, something ridiculous, or joyous, or calm, or mysterious.  Tender youthfulness laughing at gnarled oldness.  Moss and ferns, and leaves and twigs, but only apparently tied up in stillness and silence.  You must be still in order to hear and see."

~ Emily Carr, HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS.

[Please click on photo for larger image.]

"Oh to be still enough to hear and see and know the glory of the sky and earth and sea!" ~ Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands

~ Emily Carr, EMILY CARR COUNTRY, Portrayed by Courtney Milne, 2001.McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

Happy Valentine's Day ~
                 ~ Emily Dickinson

The rose did caper on her cheek,
     Her bodice rose and fell,
Her pretty speech, like drunken men,
Did stagger pitiful.

Her fingers fumbled at her work, ~
Her needle would not go ;
What ailed so smart a little maid
It puzzled me to know,

Till opposite I spied a cheek
That bore another rose ;
Just opposite, another speech
That like the drunkard goes ;

A vest that, like the bodice, danced
To the immortal tune, ~
Till those two trouble little clocks
Ticked softly into one.

Wild nights !  Wild nights !
     Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury !

Futile the winds
To a heart in port, ~
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden !
Ah  !  the sea  !

Might I but moor
To-night in thee !


     ~Emily Dickinson, COLLECTED POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON.

Favourite Love Stories

Thank you The Haldimand Press for sharing our Third Thursday Event

[For large type please click on photo]

Journals Serve Many Purposes

Fishing Diary recording, "Best day's fishing I ever had!  Played salmon about 1/2 hour.  21 lbs; pike 7 lbs. "

Reminder ~ 

Cindy Presant:  Daily Life on Paper -- Journals, Sketchbooks and Cookbooks.  The value of recording the simple aspects of everyday life, and how that creates a treasured insight into the life of an individual and a family.  Please bring a handwritten example of one of the above to share in the second half of the session.

Cindy lives in rural Haldimand with her husband, Ron.  She has a fascinating career in art, cooking and writing.  This varied background makes her our "Fascinating Personality" of February.

Thursday, February 19 at 1:00 p.m.

The Neat Little Bookshop

29 Talbot Street (Hwy 3)

Cayuga  905.577.5635 Limited seating.

From THE JOURNALS OF ANNE LANGTON:  A GENTLEWOMAN IN UPPER CANADA

Tuesday, January 15. [1839] Another brilliant morning, but severe frost.  John had one trip for hay before breakfast, and afterwards took another walk with me -- not a very long one.  We bent our steps in the contrary direction to yesterday.  The wolves and foxes had been enjoying themselves as well as ever;  I shall begin to be acquainted with the tracks of the beasts of the forest.  I looked back at our own tracks, and wondered whether mine would be recognised as that of a woman, enveloped as are my feet in two pairs of stockings, a pair of socks, my house moccasins, and another pair over them.

Wednesday, January 23.  This was the very coldest day we have had.  The thermometer was 20 below zero, with a strong wind.  It blew very hard during the night;  the mercury stood only three degrees above zero in our room whilst we were dressing.  At noon it rose to five, and once we contrived to raise it to eight, which is what a good fire has been able to do for it.

Tuesday, April 16.  Springtime makes busy work, notwithstanding the men and women about the house.  John was to-day chopping firewood, I kneading bread, and the other ladies also busily occupied.  This department of mine I intend now to resign, but to-day I had to pay the penalty of mismanaging matters so as to have to bake on a washing day.  There is no unmixed good in this world.  A wash-house, a boiler, and an oven are great comforts, but they consume an immensity of wood.



~ Edited by H.H. Langton.  CLARKE, IRWIN & COMPANY LIMITED. 1950.

If I had a ship,
I'd sail my ship,
I'd sail my ship
Through Eastern seas;
Down to a beach where the slow waves
     thunder ~
The green curls over and the white falls
     under ~
Boom!  Boom!   Boom!
On the sun-bright sand.
Then I'd leave my ship and I'd land,
And climb the steep white sand,
And climb to the trees,
The six dark trees,
[. . .]
And there would I rest, and lie,
My chin in my hands, and gaze
At the dazzle of sand below,
And the green waves curling slow,
And the grey-blue distant haze
Where the sea goes up to the sky. . . .

And I'd say to myself as I looked so lazily down at
     the sea:
"There's nobody else in the world, and the world
     was made for me."

~ [Apologies to:  A. A. Milne WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1924] The Island.

"...feeling more snowy behind the ears
than he had ever felt before." ~ Pooh

Today ~

"Into many a green valley
     Drifts the appalling snow;"  ~ W. H. Auden

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore.  "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

~ A. A. Milne, "Pooh Builds a House" - THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER, E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1928.

There is in my old picture-book

A page at which I like to look,
Where knights and squires come riding down
The cobbles of some steep old town,
And ladies from beneath the eaves
Flutter their bravest handkerchiefs,
Or, smiling proudly, toss down gages. . .
But that was in the Middle Ages.
It wouldn't happen now; but still,
Whenever I look up the hill
Where, dark against the green and blue,
The firs come marching, two by two,
I wonder if perhaps I might
See suddenly a shining knight
Winding his way from blue to green ~
Exactly as it would have been
Those many, many years ago . . .

Perhaps I might.  You never know.

~ A. A. Milne WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc. 1924

WHEN I WAS ONE AND TWENTY

When I was one-and-twenty
   I heard a wise man say,
"Give crowns and pounds and guineas
   But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
   But keep your fancy free."
But I was one-and-twenty,
   No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
   I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
   Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs aplenty
   And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty,
   And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

~ A. E. Housman (1859 - 1936) English classical scholar and poet.

Hot Chocolate Would be Good

Thought for Today ~ 

"We both felt, while bought bobbles are more immediately attractive, our hearts warm more to the home-made offering . . . lace bags in a rainbow of colors, filled with lavendar from the garden and tied with a ribbon. . ."

~ Maud Tomlinson, The Illustrated Diary of a Victorian Woman, 1880.

Smile for Today ~

"Love should run out to meet love with open arms.  Indeed, the ideal story is that of two people who go into love step for step, with a fluttered consciousness, like a pair of children venturing together into a dark room."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque.

Seven days until Valentine's Day

Daily Life on Paper:  Journals, Sketchbooks and Cookbooks

 

 

Keeping a record of your everyday life, through what you see, experience and cook, will be discussed at the free public talk titled "Daily Life on Paper" at The Neat Little Bookshop, 29 Talbot Street in Cayuga at 1:00 p.m. on February 19.  Guest speaker Cindy Presant, a local artist, will discuss the significance of handwritten records and how these records can be used as ways to understand yourself and preserve the stories of your life.  She will share simple ways to start a journal, sketchbook or cookbook using paper-based methods.  Attendees are encouraged to bring a handwritten example of their own to share with the group in the second half of the afternoon session.

 

"Daily Life on Paper" is the February-featured talk of the Haldimand Literary Group, commonly known as "Fascinating Personalities" which meets monthly every third Thursday at the bookshop.  The group began meeting several years ago to discuss cultural topics and interesting personalities including local people, artists and authors.  Over the years this has included topics such as china painting, stained-glass art, poetry, self-publishing and famous celebrated artists and authors.  Topics scheduled for this spring are calligraphy, specifically The St. John's Bible Project, by Vickie Peart;  family letters from your family treasury; and "Pompeii" a reading by the author, John Passfield.

 

 

Mark your calendar:  Thurs., Feb. 19 at 1:00 p.m.

 



Freshly Fallen Snow ~

View from Our Window ~ on Monday

"Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand."  ~  Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) Journal January 5, 1856



~ BARTLETT'S Familiar Quotations, Sixteenth Edition, John Bartlett, Little, Brown and Company. 

Along the Heritage Grand River

[Down Stream From Village of York]