Something New on the Avenue

Someone has constructed and planted a Little Free Library on University Avenue, conveniently located near the elementary school and clearly visible to all comers coming up from the highway or down from the University. I wonder who?

At the moment, it holds no books, so I am sorely tempted to place some inside. However, it might be best to await news. I suspect it's coming soon in The Sewanee Mountain Messenger!

Purging

I
The purposeful kind is good.

It relieves the owner of the burden of collecting and it benefits the recipient of unexpected gifts.

Witness, a former student, whose goal -- despite being an elementary-level math teacher -- is to teach high school English. She stopped by today and picked up four full boxes of my favorite Heinemann/Boynton Cook literacy books. I don't miss them one bit.

II
The thoughtless kind is not.

It burdens the mind and weighs down the heart, longing for some physical connection to a loved past.

Years ago, someone threw out all the old family photographs (including a wonderful little album of my high-school and college-aged father in ancient black-and-white snaps -- one in his tennis togs, another sitting in his old Model A, and many more), Daddy's tipple, all the pictures that hung on the hallway into my parents' bedroom, and the original 16-millimeter silent movies. In their early adulthood, he and friends (including my mother) wrote and produced their own feature films. When my oldest brother was a baby, Daddy even experimented with his first color film, making a stop-motion short of a puppet riding the toy train under the Christmas tree.

III
I'm glad some folks appreciate the old things and introduce them to younger ones, and I can't help wondering if my father might have seen and been inspired by It's a Bird, the 1930 stop-motion feature. You can see it here on "The End of Being."

Sometimes Its' the "Little" Things'

Label Seen at Tennessee Antiquarian Book Fair, Sewanee, TN

Question 1
Did these books belong to one kid? If so, who is that famous child whose ownership has made these valuable enough for purchase and collection? Might it not be more impressive to identify said "kid"?

Question 2
If these are not books of a single child but of children in general, then why would a book seller who, one would assume, is literate and treasures the writing in texts as well as their forms, state they are kid's books rather than kids' books?

Question 3
Did the seller purchase the shelf, books, and label all at one time from a used book store run by a punctuation-challenged owner going out of business?

Question 4 (inspired by a comment from JP on seeing said sign)
Has the writer quoted "kid's" to suggest irony or sarcasm as done with air quotes (you know, those double-digit-two-handed virtual marks made by speakers)? Are these books in fact not appropriate for a child or kid? What makes them inappropriate? Who made that judgment call?

Question 5
Does the sign make fun of a child or children or those who read like a kid, thus justifying the label "kid's"? Are the quotation marks a punctuation slap to the face? A commentary on the quality of the books themselves? If so, why has the store owner purchased them with an eye to re-sale?

Question 6
Does the label maker even know that the quotation marks and apostrophe here are nonsense? If these are "kid's" books, then they must be the (or a or some) "kid's" books. If not why aren't they "kids'" books? And if they are books suitable for kids, why aren't they just kids' books?

Lest you think I am eccentric or mad, see Apostrophe Abuse and The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.

Its' so comforting to "know" that Im "not" alone.

No Books Were Harmed in the Making of These Trees

The folks at duPont Library know how to de-stress students at end of term: book tree contest, tasty treats, and therapy dogs.

I sure could have used some librarians like this in graduate school!

One Aria to Sing

From a not very good book I finished today (others liked it, but not I so much), this rang true: "The past is so tenacious. . . . Everyone has one aria to sing over their life, . . ." (The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer).

So many times, I've taught students who've written about the same longing or sorrow or trauma or idea, revisiting and revising one thread from eighth through twelfth grades, sometimes well into college.

Tennessee Williams and Annie Dillard wrote their individual tales over and over again, in new form, picking at the same scab.

I, too, have done the same, never quite resolving or working out whatever the memory or feeling meant, might mean, could mean.

Tonight, as I ate summer fruit from a handmade bowl, whose family of North Carolina potters I first encountered at 17 -- the juices bursting, tingling, mixing tartness with syrupy sweetness, I thought of the place where I wish I were: at camp reunion with old friends, among my oldest, lying on the canoe dock, looking at stars, singing our mutual opera again.

Back-to-Back Mysteries

Years ago, my friend Betsy introduced me to the pleasure of reading mysteries. When I moved here some years back, she visited for a week each summer, paperbacks in hand. When she left, she also left the books for me. 

This past week, I finished two mysteries, back-to-back. One of them, Girls' Night Out was written by one of Betsy's favorites -- Anne Carroll George. Betsy chuckled alound when she read George's books, and now I see why. The Birmingham writer created two sisters whose banter and behavior are delightful. The mystery itself -- one sister buys a run-down country bar and the previous owner is murdered the next day -- isn't nearly as much fun as the characters and the references to Birmingham places and sites with which I, a native, am familiar.

Far more satisfying, both as a mystery and as a work of literature, is The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro. A painter, talented but ignored by galleries, agrees to copy a work by Degas, provided to her by a dealer. She immediately recognizes the "original" Degas as a fake, and thus begins a fascinating tale revolving around a famous heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. My favorite parts of the book, however, dealt with the artist's painting technique -- ranging from stripping an old painting down to the sizing to the multipe layers of paint and glazing to the large oven in which she bakes her copy. I've taken many art history courses, and I've read widely about art, but for the first time, the process of making a painting came to life for me.

When I finished the book, I wanted nothing more than to recommend it to Betsy. But I can't, as she -- like Anne George -- died some years ago. Instead, I'll recommend it to the friends who read my blog. 

Maybe I can pass along an inherited taste for mystery.

Kindle: Pro and Con

I thank the Kindle inventor and my family for their Christmas gift. In one month, I've regained my reading pace, completing seven books (The Round House, Epitaph for a Peach, Absurdistan, The Sense of an Ending, Salvage the Bones, Home, and Life Everlasting: The Animal Way of Death. This afternoon, I started Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-distance Swimmer, and moments ago I downloaded A Visit from the Goon Squad, having learned it's wise to have a book loaded before finishing one. The best thing about my Kindle? Ease of reading: I can adjust the text size and brightness to compensate for my still-out-of-balance reading prescription.

I love reading this way, but . . . .

I miss the smell and feel of paper, the weight of a book, the beauty of the dust jacket and cloth cover, and illustrations large enough to see. I had to squint to see the line drawings of stink bugs and other creatures in Life Everlasting, an irritation that actually interfered with my reading pleasure. And I miss using my colored flags to mark pages and passages to return to when further along in the book. Only today did I figure out how to mark a whole passage and not just a word and then read all the marked passages. I can't, however, flip around the way I used to. And I'm a dedicated book flipper. For me, reading can be a physical activity.

Nevertheless, I've got my reading mojo working, and that makes me a happy woman.

The Pleasures of Paper

Three reasons to celebrate the season.

Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, which I checked out today.  Perhaps my new reading glasses will work.  I hope so.  I have missed good books.

A display of beautiful birds, hung along an inner wall facing offices.  I have seen these birds three times and read about them once.  I am not finished with them yet.

The librarians and students who have decorated with book and paper trees, garlands, and wreaths.

Season's greetings and thanks to those at the dupont Library who love paper as much as I.

The Color Purple

Sometimes, a book whispers from my library shelf.

Coming in from outside, where crocus loosen among piled leaves in my narrow front bed, I heard, "Listen, God love everything you love -- and a mess of stuff you don’t. But more than anything else, God love admiration . . . Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it." (Alice Walker's The Color Purple)

Today, I share crocus purple and Walker's words.