Hoping that you had a wonderful Valentine's Day!  We have been busy in the bookshop acknowledging some of the folks who have helped make the bookshop better.  If you are ever on facebook, check out the numerous photographs of fascinating personalities and of course authors who have visited us.

There are too many to mention and we don't have photographs of everyone.  It was in November of 2004 that our first bookshelves appeared on Cayuga Street.  We existed in a remote corner at 11 Cayuga Street opposite the red-brick building where Herb Martindale began the original Neat Little Bookshop.  There were five empty commercial windows at the time and since that, businesses have come and gone.  Thank you to all of our supporters:  family and friends, customers and fellow Cayuga Street businesses.

~ John & Lorna

 

The Neat Little Bookshop Wishes to Express Our Thanks

 

Customer Appreciation Days ~  Bookshop Specials

  

Customer Appreciation Days

At Cottonwood Mansion

 

Shirley Otterman   Norma Mowat   Harold Schaus

 

Thank you, Norma Mowat & Harold Schaus Canadian veterans, for your service 

 

Corporal Harold Schaus poses with his son, Ken Schaus

To a Distant Friend ~ 

Why art thou silent!  Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fiber that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
Bound to thy service with unceasing care ~
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant
For naught but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak! ~ thought his soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold
Than a forsaken bird's nest filled with snow
'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine~
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!

~ William Wordsworth

Wishing You Healthy & Happy Holidays ~

 

 

 

Our Christmas Holidays ~ Thank you, Ross "the professional" modeler ~ Rebecca.



Gizmo

Faye Farrance, volunteer and friend of the bookshop, is recovering well in West Haldimand Hospital, Hagersville.  Her wee dog, Gizmo, is missing her and wondering where her mother is.

 

Faye thanks everyone for their good wishes, kindnesses and support.  We are not sure when Faye will be getting home ~ Get well quickly, Faye.

 

Update:  Faye returned home in time for Christmas.  She welcomes visits, email, phone calls and can be contacted on Facebook:  Faye O'Handley Farrance.  Speedy recovery Faye.

 

 



"One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.  Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim."

~ Henry Brooks Adams (1838 - 1918) American novelist, journalist, member of the political Adams family.  The Education of Henry Adams [1907, ch. 4.

"There are two kinds of people:  those who wear badly and those who wear well.

     The folk who wear badly usually begin by making a good impression. . .they are so pleasant, ready to flatter, and so eager to help.  But as time goes on you find them just not as wonderful as you were sure they were at first.
     The second type are folk who, at first, are perhaps a bit too quiet, anything but fascinating or amusing and certainly never showy. . .but as time goes on you discover they mean what they say, they lend a hand, and you can depend upon them.  The first wear badly.  The others wear well."

~Francis Gay, The FRIENDSHIP BOOK, 1969

The Book Lady

We lost a dear friend, Dorothy Brown, The Book Lady.  Dorothy was well-known in the CircleM/Mizeners Flea Market, Hwy. 5 in Flamboro.  She came to Canada in 1946 as a war bride. She was  in her 91st year.

Dorothy and her husband, Roy, opened a bookshop and collectibles thirty years ago.  We will miss you, Dorothy.

Thought for Today ~

Something has become sadly apparent to us.  Hoping that we are missing something.  Are there no Cancer Society volunteer drivers in the Cayuga area?  A friend who has been supportive of the bookshop since the beginning is  unfortunately facing many trips to the city from Cayuga and so far ~ other than ourselves and a couple friends ~ her drivers are coming from Port Colborne, Grimsby and Dunnville.

George Eliot's* At Set of Sun comes to mind.

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
     And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard --
     One glance most kind,
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.

But, if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay --
     If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face--
     No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost --
Then count that day as worse than lost.


*Mary Ann Evans, Victorian novelist, journalist, poet (1819 - 1880), used the pen name George Eliot in order that her writing be taken seriously.

[Driver reimbursement information available at www.cancer.ca "Information Driver Centre"

Congratulations Marilyn

Scene at Michelangelos, Hamilton.  Friend, Marilyn Paterson, was among sixty nominees for Senior of the Year Awards, 2014. "Celebrating our Senior Volunteers." Congratulations Marilyn.  Well deserved. An inspiration to all of us.

Retired from the Dean's office in the Faculty of Engineering , McMaster University, Marilyn has worked to brighten other people's lives ~ spending  many hours at Wesley Centre, Hamilton and previously Carey House in Burlington, a home for ten physically challenged adults.

Her untiring efforts to raise funds to help ALS patients and whenever possible meeting and encouraging ALS and PLS friends, make Marilyn one of our favourite people.  Marilyn is an active member of Chalmers Presbyterian Church, Hamilton.

[Photo:  June 24, 2014 lbw]  

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done
   And counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard ~
   One glance most kind,
That fell like sunshine where it went
Then you may count that day well spent.

~ Mary Ann Evans, pen name: George Eliot  (1819 - 1889) English novelist.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (18-3 - 1882)  American essayist, poet.


~ To See a World in a Grain of Sand, Caesar Johnson, C. R. Gibson Company.

[To "The Other Maria,"  Miss you. Please write!]



  

The Things I Prize ~

These are the things I prize
   And hold of dearest worth:
Light of the sapphire skies,
Peace of the silent hills,
Shelter of the forests, comfort of the grass,
Music of birds, murmur of little rills,
Shadows of clouds that swiftly pass,
   And, after showers,
   The smell of flowers
And of the good brown earth ~
And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth.

~ Henry Van Dyke (1852 - 1933) American author, educator

Yes, in the poor man's garden grow
Far more than herbs and flowers ~
Kind thoughts, contentment, peace of mind,
And joy for weary hours.

~ Mary Howitt, English poet. (b. 1799).  Mary & William were well-known writers in their day.

"You know, Francis, when I have problems and feel a bit downhearted, I like to go out and work in the garden.  Maybe it is just being in the fresh air beside so many growing things, but I know I go back indoors more relaxed and hopeful about dealing with my worries, which seem to become smaller.
I smiled.  'That's the value of your garden, John.  Mary Howitt knew all about it, and so do lots of people, including yourself. ' "
[Conversation related in The Friendship Book by Francis Gay, 1999.]

"Choose thy friends like thy books, few but choice."

~ James Howell Writer, historian (1594 - 1666)

Resurrecting some hazy high school memories?

 The Neat L'l Bookshop will reopen WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2.  John and I spent time with friends ~ on seaside walks, watching the ocean dolphins, pelicans, gathering shells and taking long drives along the Gulf Coast.

 

 

"...there is so much sea imagery in the book [Winter's Tales*].  One image in particular keeps recurring: an enveloping blueness, in which the horizon dissolves and the sea and the sky seem to be the same element.  This is the vision King Erik has when he clears the hill and looks down upon the shore where Granze is fishing, and it is what Lady Helena remembers about her nine days with the young sailor:  'There is no up and down in the sea.' "

~ *Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen The Life of a Storyteller, Judith Thurman, St. Martin's Press, 1982.

The sun, the sand, the sea ~ 

" I love to sit on the beach and watch the sunsets, reflecting on the past and reviewing the various possible paths to the future.  Somehow, I'm more objective when I'm at the beach.  I can shut the rest of the world out and do my best inner reflection." ~ Ruth Fishel

~PRECIOUS SOLITUDE, Finding peace and serenity in a hectic world  ~ Ruth Fishel, Adams Media Corp., 1999

 

 

 

(For larger image, click on photo.  lbw)

6:30 a.m. A Devastating Fire remains out-of-control at Rosa Flora, Dunnville, Ontario.  Rosa Flora is the biggest grower of gerbera in North America as well as many other flowers.  Our thoughts are with our friends at Rosa Flora.

www.rosaflora.com   Find Rosa Flora on Facebook

"What a desolate place would be a world without flowers!  It would be a face without a smile, a feast without a welcome."

~ Clara L. Balfour