January Clearance Continues...

Zeus says, "Come on in ~ Don't be shy."  Pick up a ballot for a chance to win a business-community gift basket.  "No hard sell here!"

Draw to take place on Monday, February 3.

Think Spring! [Photo:  May 2005 files lbw]

Today -  SOUP 'A' BOWL 2013

Bring a bag of non-perishable groceries to support our Haldimand Food Banks and for $1, receive a bowl of soup donated by our local restaurants.

LOCATION:  HALDIMAND MOTORS' NEW BUILDING
5th ANNUAL SOUP 'A' BOWL Friday, Jan. 31st.  5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Follow Haldimand Motors on Facebook



Lookout on Ouse Street [files 2012 lbw]

Neat L'l Bookshop readers will recognize our favourite "lookout" on the Grand ~ (may not recogize the latest village artwork.)

[There is always humour...]

To our dear Florida Friends ~

I STARTED early, took my dog,
     And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me,

And frigates in the upper floor
Extended hempen hands,
Presuming me to be a mouse
Aground upon the sands.

But no man moved me till the tide
Went past my simple shoe,
And past my apron and my belt,
And past my bodice too,

And he--he followed close behind;
I felt his silver heel
Upon my ankle,--then my shoes
Would overflow with pearl.

Until we met the solid town,
No man he seemed to know;
And bowing with a mighty look
At me, the sea withdrew.

~ Emily Dickinson
COLLECTED POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Chatham River Press Classics, 1983

[Photo:  James N. Allan Park, lbw files.]

Gerald Clark, Canadian journalist, takes on a story ~

After the second WWII when full-scale passenger service, by ship, resumed.  Ocean liners, which had carried hundreds of thousands of troops in jammed quarters during six years of war, were now refitted on a luxury scale.

Clark's assignment was to travel from Montreal to Southampton on the Canadian Pacific's Empress of Scotland, and return.  He was to write about the kind of people who now enjoyed peacetime travel.  One man's story never left him.

A man called "Boots" had worked all his life shining shoes--women's shoes, men's shoes, children's shoes.  During the war, he did it ashore.  Back at sea, he was happily shining shoes again "while the ship rolled and creaked."

The journalist followed "Boots" night after night as he picked up and cleaned the footwear that waited outside many cabin doors.  "Not once did I think of asking whether he knew tedium.

It was plain that "Boots" was as fascinated by the one shoe now in his palm as he must have been tens of thousands of pairs ago. "

"Look here," he said, pointing to the heel. "You see where the right side is worn much more than the other side.  The man who wears this shoe has no fears of life."

"How did "Boots" know?  He just knew, that's all.  Experience had given him this insight, so he could judge the character of an individual--an individual he never met in person--by the way the heel or the sole sloped.  "Boots" analyzed every piece of footwear this way.  He administered a magnificent shine.  He was terribly proud of his work and he was never bored."

~ Gerald Clark, NO MUD ON THE BACK SEAT, Memoirs of a reporter. Robert Davies Publishing, 1995.

The title reads:  "...a terrific treat on a winter's morning."

Van Gogh rendered several versions of his "mad" sunflowers ~ two of which currently hang side-by-side in a special exibit in London's National Gallery.

Journalist Alastair Sooke, writing for the British newspaper The Telegraph, features the Van Gogh exibit in an article, 25 January, 2014/January 27.  Comments are mixed.


www.nationalgallery.org
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/artreview/105.org

Follow Vincent Willem Van Gogh or Van Gogh Museum on www.Facebook.com

Alastair Sooke The Telegraph
Photo: Julian Simmonds

Our Mom's Doughnuts ~ (You asked)

What does this heritage landmark have to do with Mom's doughnuts?  Reta* grew up in East Seneca, Haldimand County.

1 heaping cup of brown sugar
1 tsp. melted butter
2 eggs
1 cup rich milk
2 cups or more flour
1 tsp. soda
2 tsp. cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
Nutmeg if desired

Roll dough. Cut with round donut cutter [cutter leaves hole in centre]. Save centers and odd-shaped dough (don't reroll).

Have lard hot - almost smoking to start.

Dunk donuts including holes and random shapes in very hot lard.  Turn. [Random fantasy shapes and centers were popular with kids and adults alike.]

Mom was pretty famous for these donuts.  You will be too!

*Reta Turnbull Melick
[For larger image click on photo - lbw files]