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

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.

"Searching For Green Roots" ~ History of the Beacoms

Quoting from a 1967 booklet, "Through the Years in West Nissouri 1818 to 1967" by Ida Logan of Thorndale, ON. about the crossing from Ireland to the new world.

"For the early immigrants, the six-week Atlantic crossing was quite a hardship.  They sailed in cargo vessels which carried squared timber back to Britain.  The ship's captain put in a few temporary partitions and bunks, and jammed in hundreds of passengers, who had to look after their own needs on the long voyage.
They supplied their own bedding, dishes, food, except bread and water which the captain provided.  The cooking was done over fireplaces where much pushing and shoving occurred over turns to cook porridge, salt pork, or potatoes.  The same confusion reigned over wash basins and corners for fresh air as the quarrels raged between peopled housed in such cramped quarters.  Colds and other diseases spread rapidly among the passengers.  It was not unusual to have 40 - 50 funerals in one crossing."

~ Lulu M. Carson & M. Phyllis Thompson,
Abco Copy Cat Limited, London, ON, 1989.

"I do love nothing in the world so well as you;  is not that strange?"
~ Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

"Love cannot be wasted.
It makes no difference where
it is bestowed; it always
brings in big returns."
~ Anonymous


"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination...."
~ John Keats

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


Compiled by Heather H. Copp, Harvest House Publishers, 1997.

"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]

May the beauty and spirit of the season remain with you all year.

John and I would like to thank our family and friends for all your support.  We look forward to a new year, 2016.

Never a Christmas morning,

Never the old year ends ~

But someone thinks of someone,

Old days, old times,

old friends.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

 

 

 



SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 ~ The bookshop is closed while we attend a family Christmas event.  We apologize for any inconvenience.  In order to make up some holiday hours, we will open on Monday, December 14, 10:30 to 5:00.
 
Have a safe and happy weekend ~ John and Lorna


REGULAR HOURS:  Wed. to Fri. 10:30 to 5:00.  Sat. 10:30 to 3:00.

Please NOTE:  Third Thursday, DECEMBER 17 will be our regular literary group at 1:00 p.m.  If you did not receive our e-mail monthly notice and wish to have your name added to our list, please let us know.  This month's theme:  Bring a treasured Christmas item ~ a family heirloom perhaps, a special poem, picture ~ whatever feels like Christmas!

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

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.
 

"When I was a boy, and for quite some time after that,  all work on Township roads was done by the farmers living on that road.  When the tax slip came around, besides the taxes in dollars and cents it had so many day's road work.  I suppose that would be for a man and a team [heavy horses] because about all that was done on them was team work ~ levelling or putting earth in low places with a scraper. 

Every once in a while, depending on the road boss who was one of the farmers, the big grader was brought on. I don't know who appointed him. That required one or two furrows to be plowed in the ditch and three teams were put on the grader and the road was graded.  Needless to say, for some time after that, it wasn't any more than fit to drive on but there were no cars and roads were all alike.  It wasn't noticed, only when a low spot was raised with scrapers and not levelled off was there fault found and some bosses were noted for that.  Needless to say, they weren't popular and their term was short.

Most road work was done after seeding and before haying.  That was always a big day for the kids.  They lived on the road that day while the men went back and forth on the road.

That system probably was the best for the time but times have changed and the Township got road machinery and lately steady-paid workers and the roads are kept up to a much higher standard than they were.  Change is always going on.  For the better?  Sometimes that might be debatable but we will have to give the ones that are responsible at the particular time of doing the best they think.  If it doesn't work that way, the next council will change it.  The country has been brought to the present state by the trial and error method and probably that is the best method to follow."

~ J. A. Turnbull (1890 - 1975)  East Seneca, Haldimand County.

The Eye Opener ~ Blackheath Feb. 24, 1933  [Paper found in family files.]

In presenting this copy of the eye-opener, the editor wishes to extend the greetings and good wishes from the Blackheath Literary Society to the Society at this place.  We are engaged in a common task not only furnishing clean amusement but education as well.

What better way is there to find out the latest talent hidden away in the country places than by taking part in a program of this kind - in practising plays - debates - recitations - songs, etc.?  Who know but what the future premiers are getting their start right now on some Literary Society platform in some small country place.  But we can't all be premiers, yet each one of us that takes part feels some advancement in the education that is necessary to make a life.

It has been said that the present generation is loosing the power and ability to amuse itself choosing rather to go to places of professional amusement.  But the crowds that are drawn to these literary meetings and the excellency of the programmes give the lie to both statements and long may it continue.  And in this work we hope you will continue to help make out of the rising generation men and women that will be better fitted for the journey of life than they otherwise would be -- and they looking back -- will bless the efforts of those who are carrying the burden of what I must confess sometimes seems a thankless task.  But it is not so.  We shall reap if we faint not.

~

Jack - Speaking about dreams, I dreamt last night that - er - I proposed to you.  What's that a sign of?
Nelly - That's a sign that you have more sense when you are asleep than when you are awake.

~

Teacher - And you don't know what letter comes after H?
John - No, Miss.
Teacher - What have I on each side of my nose?
John - It looks like powder from here, Miss.

J.A. Turnbull

Champions!

"Pulling for Krista" ~ get well xo

John's Great Pumpkin

John A. Turnbull of East Seneca

Third Thursdays at The Neat L'l Bookshop are
set aside for the Literary Group/Fascinating Personalities.  Today we are changing the location, meeting in The Haldimand Stewardship Council office on Cayuga Street at 1:00 p.m. Optional:  Lunch at the Back40.

Topic:  "Bring a few Letters"

Below:  A letter from a young man to his "wifie" while planning a homestead and building their "dream" home.  "I see you are getting real careless with that D.R. [diamond ring].  If Mother hasn't seen it yet, I don't know where her eyes are but she hasn't said anything."

John A. Turnbull and Mary B. Jackson m. and lived in the dream house in East Seneca, Haldimand County.

"Dear little Wifie"

"My Dear Mary"

[Click on photo for larger image.]

Pin the Cherry on the Cupcake!