1982

1979

1978

Local artist, William Biddle's early career included creating romantic art for use on the covers of various Harlequin series.  Visit the artist's gallery, Hwy. 3 (Talbot St. W.), in Cayuga, Ontario, within a block of The Neat Little Bookshop.  Give your sweetheart a unique gift of art.

(Click on picture for larger image.  Note the artist's signature.)

 Wm. Biddle's Gallery "In-Beween" is located in-between Towpath on the Grand & The Gardner's Blacksmith Shop, Hwy. 3, Cayuga, ON. http://www.towpathonthegrand.com

Smile for Today ~

Ever sent out an invitation with a catchy phrase?  A guy in Wiarton, Ontario back in 1956 sent his friends a "Groundhog Day" invitation.  It was his novel way of having friends in to see his family home.

One of these invitations came to the attention of a Toronto Star reporter who naturally headed out to Wiarton for the story.  After partying all night in the Arlington Hotel with Mac McKenzie and his friends, the reporter suggested to Mac that in order to justify his expenses, this story needed some substance.

Never lacking for imagination, the creator of "Groundhog Day" eager to help the reporter, grabbed his wife's fur hat, dug a hole in the ground, buried the furry thing and pronounced a "prognostication (that no one remembers.)"

The photograph appeared in the February 3, 1956 edition of the Toronto Star.  The following year, 50 people arrived for the festival, including the CBC and Canadian Press.

Source:  Wikipedia 

"HAPPY GOUNDHOG DAY!"

Groundhog Day?

Some of us are waiting anxiously to see whether Wiarton Willie sees his shadow today.  If he comes out of his burrow this morning in sunlight we "know" that spring is just around the corner.  If he doesn't see his shadow, well, six more weeks of winter...(or is it the other way around?)

The reference book, 2107 CURIOUS WORD ORIGINS, SAYINGS & EXPRESSIONS tells us that we should properly call this largest member of the squirrel family a marmot, or even a woodchuck, for "there is definitely nothing hoggish about him. (Or her, as the case may be.)"  The word woodchuck may come from the Dutch aardvark, earth pig or hog, an animal of South Africa "which has similar burrowing propensities."
Earth pig, woodchuck or Marmot, we will be watching.  Actually, "Marmot Day" doesn't seem unreasonable; has a rather lyrical sound!

~ Charles Earle, Galahad Books, 1993.

Update:  Wiarton Willie DID NOT see his shadow today.  He is predicting six more weeks of winter?

The Author & Father

Author Doris Kienitz and her father Fred with more tales~

Untold Stories...East Germany and the Escape

An Evening at The Sunflower Cafe

Fisherville

Saturday, February 9th,
6 - 8 pm

Special Three-Course German Dinner

$19.99 per person

Reservations Required

Phone 905-776-1585 or email dkienitz3@hotmail.com

www.eastgermanyandtheescape.com

(Photo: At York Historical Society lbw)

Alice Munro ~Canadian Short-Story Writer

"My mother has told me that until she was twenty-three or so her writing was consciously imitative.  She wanted to write like VirginiaWoolf or Henry James, exploring the minute problems in people's lives, trying to get at some ineffable experience.  She wanted to capture some atmosphere about a place, some feeling that was important, to get at 'the exact texture of how things are.' "

Later in life Alice would say that all her writing was "in essence autobiographical."  Her writing was about "human life."
"She could not understand how writers choose a time and then write about that, or consciously choose symbols.  Her desire is to enter into the experience of other people, to gain access to realities other than her own, to pull away a curtain and reveal 'some dazzling mystery.'  The critic and writer Kent Thompson put his finger on her particular genius during a CBC Radio panel discussion when he said,

'She imagines reality accurately.'"

~ Sheila Munro, Lives of Mothers & Daughters, Growing Up with Alice Munro, McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 2001.  A. Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario on July 10, 1931.  Winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, the Governor General's Award and perennial contender for the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Seuss On Writing ~

Dr. Seuss as quoted by biographers* said, "English and writing was my major, but I think that's a mistake.  That's teaching you the mechanics of getting water out of a well that may not exist."

In The Joy of Books, Eric Burns writes, "[The writer] must be indiscriminate, willing to do almost anything for experience;  he must be selective, unwilling to repeat himself for the sake of ease or compromise himself for the sake of novelty....
"The writer, though, cannot rely solely on his own experience, as it makes up too limited a domain.  He is but one person, and humanity a multitude of shared traits, conflicting values and radically differing perspectives.  The writer needs a broader vantage point than his own resources can provide, one that embraces people and places and practices which would otherwise be alien to him.

"Commenting on the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Will Durant writes, 'Since any man's experience can be no more than a microscopic fragment of reality, Leonardo supplemented his with reading, which can be experience by proxy.' "
~ The Joy of Books, Confessions of a Lifelong Reader, Prometheus Books, 1995.

* Judith & Neil Morgan.



Along the Heritage Grand ~



"I turned and looked back upward.

The whole sky was blue;

And the thick flakes floating at a pause

Were but frost knots on an airy gauze,

With the sun shining through." 

~ Robert Frost (1874 - 1963) American poet, "Afterflakes."

(Photos:  The Grand, Cayuga. January, 2013 lbw)