"The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips into the infantile comprehension.  A man of high intelligence, perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat.  But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are naturally on the plane of a child's.  The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike."

~ H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) American journalist, editor, critic.

As we send our children and grandchildren back to school this morning, let us vow to support the voices of reason.  Let us take a minute to write, to e-mail, to out-shout the self-serving rhetoric of pro-gun advocates screaming outdated legislation. lbw

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love."
~ Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846 - 1916) American editor, essayist, critic.

"It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child Himself."
~ Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) British author.

"The time draws near the birth of Christ:
The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist."

~  Alfred Tennyson (1809 - 1892) British Poet Laureate.

Cayuga Bridge Progress:   Bridge Work Completion Spring of 2013



The Grand River Cayuga



Some of you may have listened to self-serving gun lobbyists screaming ~ talking over each other ~ last night on "Piers Morgan Tonight" about the American "right-to-bear-arms."  Their rhetoric is sickening.  Essentially what they are saying is, "Arm everybody and we will all be safer."

The lack of conversation in the past on the tragic shootings occurring on a regular basis in the U.S. has motivated the British-born journalist and talk-show host to speak out on the flood of weapons among the general population in the U.S.

How many more of these mass shooting will we have to endure before the powerful gun lobbyists ~ not least of all the National Rife Association www.nra.org ~ begin to care about the rights of people to feel safe?

Gun-ownership rights are currently more important than the rights of children to feel safe.



~lbw

ABE LINCOLN ~   "Mostly, he educated himself by borrowing books and newspapers There are many stories about Lincoln's efforts to find enough books to satisfy him in that backwoods country.  Those he liked he read again and again, losing himself in the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or the magical tales of The Arabian Nights.  He was thrilled by a biography of George Washington, with its stirring account of the Revolutionary War.  And he came to love the rhyme and rhythm of poetry, reciting passages from Shakespeare or the Scottish poet Robert Burns at the drop of a hat.  He would carry a book out to the field with him, so he could read at the end of each plow furrow, while the horse was getting its breath.  When noon came, he would sit under a tree and read while he ate. 'I never saw Abe after he was twelve that he didn't have a book in his hand or in his pocket,'  Dennis Hanks remembered.  'It didn't seem natural to see a feller read like that.'"

~ Abraham Lincoln, American President (b.Feb. 12, 1809 - d.April 15, 1865)

Inscription in young Abe Lincoln's homemade arithmetic book:

"Abraham Lincoln
his hand and pen
he will be good but
god knows When."

~ LINCOLN A PHOTOBIOGRAPHY, Russell Freedman, Clarion Books, 1987.
www.alplm.org

For the book lover on your list, The Neat L'l Bookshop carries used, like-new and local new.

Many hardcover popular authors are only five dollars.Check us out!  "Coffee pot's always on..."

Have a safe and happy holiday season.  Wishing you the peace and beauty the Christmas season brings. 

Victorian Parlour Cottonwood Mansion

 In The Victorian Christmas Book*, Antony & Peter Miall describe the tradition of a Christmas goose in the South of England and roast beef in the North.

In Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol (1843) the Crachit family dined on goose, "Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration."

"Bob Crachit's salary was fifteen shillings a week.  How could he afford a goose of such magnificence?  The answer lies in one of the great Victorian working-class institutions ~ The Goose Club.  Even the lowest paid worker could enjoy a goose at Christmas with his family by contributing to his local Goose Club a small part of his week's wages throughout the year.  Some Goose Clubs also raffled geese and bottles of wine or port...Bob Cratchit and many of his kind took their Christmas geese to the baker to be cooked, then returned home with the finished article to find the whole family waiting round the table with knives and forks at the ready.  Middle-class families, however, would expect to cook their own Christmas lunch."

~ *J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd., 1978.

~ Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) English author

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