Quoting a worthwhile author, poet or sharing a photograph is one of our bookshop pleasures.

Last night we attended a live stage production ~ which we do sometimes ~ and came home feeling drained. We witnessed spousal fighting, shouting, swearing, menial conversations in mundane domestic settings ~ all on stage. It was depressing.

One cannot help but feel that we could have been at home beside the fire reading a good book. Ah , yes, and the wind and snow was blowing. The roads were slippery; parking was a challenge and the lineup long.

Oh, the pleasures of a good book.
~ lw

Christina Rossetti"s Who Has Seen The Wind

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

~Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894) British Poet
Caroline Kennedy included Who Has Seen the Wind
in her 2005 book, A Family of Poems/ My Favorite Poetry For Children. Hyperion.

Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today:

"Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere."

~ Ronald Reagan (February 6, 1911 - June 5, 2004) 40th President of the United States, 1981 - 1989.

Stone Boy With Book Buried in Snow ~ Canadian Winter Today Without Sunshine.

Short List for the Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction is:

On the Farm/ Stevie Cameron
Mordecai: The Life & Times/ Charles Foran
Defiant Spirits/ Ross King
The Geography of Arrival/ George Sipos
The Love Queen of Malabar/ Merrily Weisbord

Winner to be announced on Monday, February 14.

http://www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca/

"If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them ~ peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye; set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances."

~ Winston Churchill, (1874 - 1965) British Statesman, served as Prime Minister

Herb Martindale's Neat Little Bookshop

Today we came across a newspaper clipping from February 5, 2002 in which Neil Dring, Associate Publisher of the Grand River Sachem, honoured Herb Martindale in an article titled, "At home with Herb Martindale."
Herb opened the first NEAT LITTLE BOOKSHOP in Cayuga, directly across the street from today's bookshop. [We have yet to establish the exact year] Neil captures perfectly Herb's writings, of which he had many, including a long-running column in the Sachem.

"A typical 'Herb' would start out serious with obscure literary and geographical references and then degenerate into a farce. Part of the fun of reading one of Herb's columns was to correctly identify when he had crossed the line."

Neil, the best part of your February 2002 column, of course, is the recognition of The Grand River Sachem's birthday. If I do the math correctly, on February 6th the paper will be one hundred and fifty-five years old. "One of the five oldest weeklies in Ontario" Happy Birthday Grand River Sachem!