"At length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then...
"The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter.  I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. "

~ Henry D. Thoreau (1817 - 1862) American author, poet, philosopher.

Walden A Fully Annotated Edition, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer*, Yale University Press, 2004. (based on the original 1854 edition)

*J.S. Cramer is curator of collections, The Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.

"I went to the woods..."  ~ Henry Thoreau

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation,  unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion...

"Our life is frittered away by detail.  An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest.  Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!  I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen..."

~ Walden, A Fully Annotated Edition, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer, Yale University Press, 2004.

Henry David Thoreau, American philosopher, essayist and ecologist cried out "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!*" urging man to follow the lessons of nature and "spur the seductive marvels of the new technology."

Today, I confess this bookshop blogger cried for "Simplicity!"  Cried out more than "simplicity" actually.

Google/Picaso/Blogspot will not allow The Neat L'l Bookshop to "Continue to Checkout" in order to add a few GB to our photo storage and to our GMail.  This is important if we want to continue posting photographs.  Considering "the marvels of the new technology," we are optimistic that we will soon be able to make it to "checkout"  and go wild adding photographs.

~ *Walden, Life in the Woods, 1854.

Joseph Heller, perhaps best known for his novel Catch-22, wrote "in airports, on airplanes, between appointments."

"To me, writing is largely a matter of memorizing.  I will have in mind what I want to write, often to the extent of language, phrases and sentence structure.  I walk from where I live to where I write, and by the time I get there I know most of what I'm going to do in the next two hours."

Oh, the Advantage of the computer!

"My method of work is to get a very good idea of what I want to cover ~ assign a time percentage ~ and I will rewrite each page, then each few pages, moving ahead very slowly with the handwritten page.  When I finish a whole section I go back and type what I've rewritten.  That is an extensive rewriting process ~ largely with language; usually it will be taking out much and then getting new ideas to put in.  Then I'll read it again and pencil it and give it to a typist to type."

~ Interview with Lawrence Grobel, Endangered Species, Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives,  Da Capo Press, 2001.

Joseph Heller, American novelist (May 1 1923 - December 12, 1999)

Gypsum, one of Haldimand's First Industries

Jean Farquharson will speak today at The York Grand River Historical Society.  For the book, Stories Along the Grand*, Jean researched and wrote the chapter on the gypsum mines.  The first mine opened in 1842.  A flourishing little settlement grew up, the only one in Ontario dependent exclusively on gypsum mining.  The village of Gypsum Mines was three miles south of Cayuga on River Rd. (#17) consisted of a post office, various general stores, sawmills, blacksmith shops and a log school house.
Everyone welcome.  2:00 p.m. today, Tuesday, November 20, Caledonia, in the lodge opposite Tim Hortons beside the railway track, Hwy 6.

~ * Published by the YGRHS, 2010.

On the Prolific writer, Joyce Carol Oates* ~

"Recognition is not a word one would apply to Oates's writing style.  What differentiates her from most other writers of her distinction (and what may be keeping her from having the huge popular readership of, say, Stephen King or Larry McMurtry) is that Oates doesn't have any particular style.  Like some virtuoso coloratura, she changes her voice according to her subject...
"Oates's writing, like her subject matter, is neither predictable nor comforting."

Lawrence Grobel writes, "Oates is a powerful, unflinching writer who isn't afraid to take on the most searing issues, from the rotten morality of our politicians to the self-abortion of one of the "invisible" and powerless people she so often champions."

New York Times Review: "It has been left to Joyce Carol Oates, a writer who seems to know a great deal about the underside of America, to guide us ~ splendidly ~ down dark passages."

"I can't stop taking notes." ~ J.C. Oates

~ Lawrence Grobel, Endangered Species, Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives, Da Capo Press, 2001.

*Joyce Carol Oates (b. June 16, 1938 - ) American writer.

VI ~  Emily Dickinson

Besides the autumn poets sing,

A few prosaic days

A little this side of the snow

And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,

A few ascetic eves, ~

Gone Mr. Bryant's goldenrod,

And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!