Thoughts on Father's Day ~

"The fellow that owns his own home is always just coming out of a hardware store." 
~ Kin Hubbard

"A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair the rest of his life."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You don't have to deserve your mother's love.  You have to deserve your father's.  He's more particular."
~ Robert Frost

"The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them."
~ Bertrand Russell

"Home is not where you live but where they understand you."
~ Christian Morgensters

~ "The Harper Book of Quotations", Robert I. Fitzhenry, editor.  1993, HarperCollins.

"Places of nestling green for Poets made."  ~ Story of Rimini

I STOOD tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leav'd, and finely tapering stems,
Had not yet lost those starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook ; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves :
For not the faintest motion could be seen
Of all the shades that slanted o'er the green.
There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye,
To peer about upon variety ;
Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim,
And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim ;
To picture out the quaint, and curious bending
Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending ;
Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,
Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.
I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free
As though the fanning wings of Mercury
Had play'd upon my heels:  I was light-hearted,
And many pleasures to my vision started ;
So I straightway began to pluck a posey
Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy.

~ John Keats (1795 - 1821) English romantic poet.  POETICAL WORKS OF KEATS,  Edited by H. Buxton Forman, C.B.  HUMPHREY MILFORD, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Great Britain. First published in 1908, reprinted...1940.

"When she rises up, she gets confused!"
Washington Post, 1983, when the wife of the Canadian Ambassador meets President Reagan.

"Before we met the president in his Oval Office they took us to another room, where some anxious young men told us where to stand, how long to speak and when to shove off.  They told me that only Mr. Ambassador (that's what the Americans call my husband) was to have his photo opportunity with the president, in front of the fireplace.  Wife of Ambassador was supposed to move away from the fireplace and out of camera range.
Well, you know how they used to describe me at home:  "When she rises up, she gets confused."  After the handshake I backed into the camera crew.  Some of the young men began to hiss at me, but the president grabbed my arm and insisted I be in the picture too.  I really didn't want to have my picture taken with the president because I know my hair looked like corkscrews.  But I didn't have enough time to tell the president about this hairdresser with the gold chains who had just given me the worst permanent in my whole life and that it was going to be weeks before I was photographable."

~ Sondra Gotlieb (b. 1936) Canadian journalist, novelist, lives in Toronto, Ontario. When I Rises Up, I Gets Confused!  The Best of Sondra Gotlieb. McArthur & Company 2004.

"Well into the 1800s, maple sugar was the only sugar readily available to North Americans.  However, in the late 1800s, the cane sugar industry in the Caribbean began to compete with the homemade delicacy.  After a war that included tariffs on the refined, tasteless white sugar, and bounties for maple sugar production, maple sugar gave way to the mass-production economy of cane sugar.  During the first half of the twentieth century, except for brief periods during World War 1 and World War II, when maple sugar helped ease the North American sugar shortage, maple sugar and its companion, maple syrup, became delicacies valued for their flavor rather than for their sweetening power."

Today, maple syrup, not sugar, is the favored maple product."

~ Sugartime, The Hidden Pleasures of Making Maple Syrup with a Primer for the Novice Sugarer,  Susan C. Hauser, Key Porter Books Limited, 1998.

[Photos:  Haldimand, March, 2016. lbw]

"...the fear of hurting someone's feelings may be having a chilling effect on solid conversation in general ~ not only political conversation.  At dinner parties I've attended, the topics of conversation mainly were restaurants, vacations, and health ~ all safe subjects.
To engage in small talk is often enjoyable and it certainly is "polite," but a steady diet of conversation about food, vacations, and health is tedious.  "Politeness," La Rochefoucauld says, "is essential in social life, but it should have limits;  it becomes a kind of slavery when it is excessive."
...
"Yet it is hard to avoid saccharine politeness when the alternative is often the angry venting of opinions.  Judith Martin says that "she would be only too happy to welcome the return of substantive conversation at dinner parties; goodness knows she is weary of hearing people talk about the food.  But conversation requires listening respectfully to others and engaging in polite give-and-take, rather than making speeches and impugning others' motives and judgment."

Conversation requires listening respectfully to others and engaging in polite give-and-take, rather than making speeches and impugning others' motives and judgment.

"Anne Applebaum, a Washington Post columnist, warns against discussing politics at dinner parties.  'Anyone who has ever even invited guests of opposing political persuasions over to dinner will know how quickly it can all go wrong....A chilly, polite dinner is more bearable than one that ends with guests stomping out the door'."

 

 

~ Stephen Miller, Conversation, A History of a Declining Art, Yale University, 2006.

"45 B.C. Julius Caesar adjusts 46 B.C. ~ known as the Year of Confusion with its 445 days ~ by fixing 365 days and six hours as the length of a year, with one day intercalated every four years, a leap."

~ A Book of Days for the Literary Year, Edited by Neal. T. Jones, Thames and Hudson 1984.

Happy Birthday to all you Leap Year babies!  (How old are you today?)

 

Find us on Facebook: Cayuga-on-the-Grand OR The Neat Little Bookshop

 

 

 

 



SANCTUARY by Bliss Carman

Out of the turmoil whither shall I go?
How cure the fever of a mind distraught,
The crazed futility of haste assuage,
And dear serenity's lost poise restore?
Is there no respite for the racing pulse,
No haven from the day's demoniac din
And the relentless frenzy of the night?
Were may the haunting peace of God be found?
No cabined luxury contents the soul,
Homesick for solace of its native air.
For healing of the wind among the pines,
The stilling beauty of the clear new moon,
The strength of hills, the joy of singing streams,
Take any road at hand, to Out-of-doors.

~ ESCAPE by Bliss Carman (1861 - 1929) Canadian Poet Laureate

 

 

SANCTUARY SUNSHINE HOUSE SONNETS by Bliss Carman, Illustrations by Whitman Bailey.

McClelland & Stewart, 1929.

 

 

 

 

"Now Miss Matty Jenkyns was chary of candles.  We had many devices to use as few as possible.  In the winter afternoons she would sit knitting for two or three hours;  she could do this in the dark, or by fire-light;  and when I asked if I might not ring for candles to finish stitching my wristbands, she told me to 'keep blind-man's holiday'."

"String is my foible.  My pockets get full of little hanks of it, picked up and twisted together, ready for uses that never come.  I am seriously annoyed if any one cuts the string of a parcel, instead of patiently and faithfully undoing it fold by fold.  How people can bring themselves to use Indian-rubber rings, which are a sort of deification of string, as lightly as they do, I cannot imagine.  To me an Indian-rubber ring is a precious treasure.  I have one which is not new;  one that I picked up off the floor, nearly six years ago.  I have really tried to use it; but my heart failed me, and I could not commit the extravagance.

"I have often noticed that almost every one has his own individual small economies ~ careful habits of saving fractions of pennies in some one peculiar direction--any disturbance of which annoys him more than spending shillings or pounds on some real extravagance. An old gentleman of my acquaintance, who took the intelligence of the failure of a Joint-Stock Bank, in which some of his money was invested, with stoical mildness, worried his family all through a long summer's day, because one of them had torn (instead of cutting) out the written leaves of his now useless bank-book;  of course, the corresponding pages at the other end came out as well; and this little unnecessary waster of paper (his private economy) chafed him more than all the loss of his money.  Envelopes fretted his soul terribly when they first came in;  the only way in which he could reconcile himself to such waste of his cherished article was by patiently turning inside out all that were sent to him, and so making them serve again.  Even now, though tamed by age, I see him casting wistful glances at his daughters when they send a whole instead of a half sheet of note-paper, with the three lines of acceptance to an invitation, written on only one of the sides..."

~ Elizabeth Gaskell, known as Mrs. Gaskell (1810 - 1865) English novelist. CRANFORD, Chatto & Windus Publishers, 1907.
[Photo miniature: Wikipedia.]

[Tomorrow: "String is my foible...Small pieces of butter grieve others."]

Haldimand County

 

 
 

[Photos:  February 17, 2016 lbw]

"Because of a friend ~ life is a little stronger, a fuller, more gracious thing;  for a friend's existence, whether he be near or far.  If a friend is close at hand, that is best but if he is far away he is still there to think of, to wonder about, to hear from, to write to, to share life and experience with, to serve, to honour, to admire, to love."

~ Arthur C. Benson (1862 - 1925) English essayist, poet, author.

"Happy Valentine's Day"

 

 

"You're my friend ~
What a thing friendship is, world without end!"
~ Robert Browning, The Flight of the Duchess

"In every mess I finds a friend."

~ Charles Dibdin, Jack in His Element

"Money can't buy friends
but you can get a better class of enemy."
~ Spike Milligan

"Sir, I look upon every day to be

lost, in which I do not make

a new acquaintance."

~ Samuel Johnson

 

"Even if we take matrimony

at its lowest, even if we regard it

as no more than a sort of friendship

recognized by the police."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque

~ THE LITTLE BOOK of Friends, A Compilation by Brockhampton Press 1996.

"And who will walk a mile with me
     Along life's weary way?
A friend whose heart has eyes to see
The stars shine out o'er the darkening lea."

~ Henry van Dyke, A Wayfaring Song

[Photo from cover of a 1935 book by J. Hartley Manners titled, Peg O' My Heart]

"My lover spoke and said to me,

Arise, my darling,

my beautiful one, and come with me.

See!  The winter is past; the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;

the season of singing has come...."

 

 

~ The Song of Songs

 

"There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream."

 

~ Thomas Moore

 

VALENTINE'S DAY is Sunday, February 14. [Photo files:  Jackson House, King Street & Centennial, Stoney Creek. lbw]

 



"Today there are two elements that go into friendship, each so sovereign that I can detect no superiority in either,... - One is Truth.  A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud....-.  The other element of friendship is Tenderness....- When a man becomes dear to me I have touched the goal of fortune....-.  I wish friendship should have feet, as well as eyes and eloquence.  It must plant itself on the ground before it walks over the moon...-.  The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.  It must not surmise or provide for infirmity.  It treats its object as a god, that it may defy both."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Friendship and Love"


VALENTINE'S DAY is Sunday, February 14

PICTURE-BOOKS IN WINTER

SUMMER fading, winter comes ~
Frosty mornings, tingling thumbs,
Window robins, winter rooks,
And the picture story-books.

Water now is turned to stone
Nurse and I can walk upon;
Still we find the flowing brooks
In the picture story-books.

All the pretty things put by,
Wait upon the children's eye,
Sheep and shepherds, trees and crooks,
In the picture story-books.

We may see how all things are,
Seas and cities, near and far,
And the flying fairies' looks,
In the picture story-books.

How am I to sing your praise,
Happy chimney-corner days,
Sitting safe in nursery nooks,
Reading picture story-books.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson (Nov. 13, 1850 - Dec. 3, 1894)  Scottish novelist, poet.

"Do you know what it is to be a child?  It is to be something very different from the man of today.  It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of life;   it is to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief;  it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness and nothing into everything...for each child has a fairy godmother in its soul."
 
~ Francis Thompson (1859 - 1907) English poet, writer.
 

A THING OF BEAUTY

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching:  yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.

~ JOHN KEATS (1795 - 1821) English romantic poet

Happy Labour Day Weekend

[Photo:  Lake Erie lbw]

Smile for Today ~

"I am enclosing two tickets to my new play; bring a friend...if you have one." ~ Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill.

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second night...if there is one."  ~ Churchill's reply to George Bernard Shaw.

~ Classic Put-downs, Insults with style, ARCTURUS Publishing Limited, 2013.

Final Layer of Asphalt 

Visit us in The Neat L'l Bookshop ~ We now have a sidewalk, curbs and a street.  [Lines to follow !]  Good used books ~ new books by local authors.  Stay a while.

Wed. to Fri. 10:30 to 5:00

Sat. 10:30 to 3:00

or by appointment

A sidewalk, a curb & a street!