Yesterdays

This book, The Yesterdays of Grand Rapids, by Charles Belknap has been my bed time reading for the past week.

Surprisingly, it is VERY interesting reading. I looked it up on line and was happy to find that it was reprinted in a paperback version just last year. Just maybe I should invest in the newer edition.

This one could not pass for good condition, but it is totally readable.

I read online that it is considered rare. A copy in 'good condition' was listed for $89, and a 'fair condition' for $32.

It must be great fun to write a history when no one is left alive who could refute you!

My great grandmother, Anne Dunn, was given this book by a friend. In 1930 she passed it on to her daughter Beatrice. After my Great Aunt Bea died, it went to my mom.

My mom was always aghast at how messy a book could get. Sadly, I DO understand!

I also think it is great to see my great grandmother's handwriting. She would be Jonge, Famke and Kado's great great great grandmother, so I hope someday that they will think it is great (no pun intended!) to see her handwriting.



I'm using the 'BEE' bookmark that I made because the book belonged to my Great Aunt Bea.

Most of the pages look like this one, clean and easy to read.

Also, there were a few little newspaper articles in the pages. I love finding those, too.

Elsa Beskow

It was an exciting day here yesterday!

A package came, which is ALWAYS exciting.

I had ordered a book for me, but as always it was just under the price for free shipping, so I had to think of something to bring up the price.

Never has this been a difficult thing for me to do!

So, I remembered that I have always wanted a book by Elsa Beskow.

This one in particular.

Jonge thought it might be a scary book, due to pictures of a snake, a troll and some fairies.

Not one to let POSSIBLE scariness stop us, we dove into it anyway.

The most conversation was generated when Tom, Harriet and Sam felt shy.

Jonge and Famke both feel shy sometimes. Being shy is an interesting topic to discuss with young children.

I love books that bring feelings to light.

My book was good, too.

The order I have coming next week will be steel-cut oats. I doubt that will be as exciting.

My Love Affair with the Short Story

In my humble migraine-riddled life, I've found few things more comforting than climbing into bed at night with a good book in my hands.



How I got to be 50 before that book was one written by Edith Wharton, I do not know. Perhaps because no one ever said to me, "Judy, you simply MUST read Edith Wharton." Possibly this is a direct result of hobnobbing with the under three crowd, which I so willing do.



Edith Wharton could WRITE. I can't say that the actual story is what I find so enjoyable, it is the way she captures her characters, and thereby captures me, her reader. She handles words in much the same way Seurat did dots. Remove just one, and a gaping hole would appear. Some would say the following paragraph needs the help of an editors red pen. But, I could not find one word that wasn't deftly placed.

I think this may be the most perfect paragraph ever written.

It comes from the short story, "The Pelican", which tells of the widowed Mrs. Amyot who gives lectures to support her son.




Mrs. Amyot was as pretty as ever, and there was the same curious discrepancy between the freshness of her aspect and the staleness of her theme, but something was gone of the blushing unsteadiness with which she had fired her first random shots at Greek art. It was not that the shots were less uncertain, but that she now had an air of assuming that, for her purpose, the bull's-eye was everywhere, so that there was no need to be flustered in taking aim. This assurance had so facilitated the flow of her eloquence that she seemed to be performing a trick analogous to that of the conjurer who pulls hundreds of yards of white paper out of his mouth. From a large assortment of stock adjectives she chose, with unerring deftness and rapidity, the one that taste and discrimination would most surely have rejected, fitting out her subject with a whole wardrobe of slop-shop epithets irrelevant in cut and size. To the invaluable knack of not disturbing the association of ideas in her audience, she added the gift of what may be called a confidential manner - so that her fluent generalizations about Goethe and his place in literature (the lecture was, of course, manufactured out of Lewes's book) had the flavor of personal experience, of views sympathetically exchanged with her audience on the best way of knitting children's socks, or of putting up preserves for the winter. It was, I am sure, to this personal accent - the moral equivalent of her dimple - that Mrs. Amyot owed her prodigious, her irrational success. It was her art of transposing secondhand ideas into firsthand emotions that so endeared her to her feminine listeners.

And she sighs, turns out the light and goes to sleep, dreaming of turning secondhand ideas into firsthand...

...zzzzz...

It Is Friday

What a week.

I am SO looking forward to a looong weekend.

Famke has come down with whatever it is Jonge had.

Her poor little body was SO hot.

But, she is a tough little lady and was perfectly brave about the whole thing, as long as I held her. CONSTANTLY.

Have I mentioned lately that I do not mind that?

Anyway, the three of us plus the kitty all took our naps on the couch this afternoon.

So cozy.

I did not think it would last. It did. The four of us spent four straight hours on the couch in the den.

I finished reading "O Pioneers!" and enjoyed it very much. More than "The Awakening".

Reading "A Circle of Quiet" in a Square of Noise

Finally. I have finished reading "A Circle of Quiet", again.

I started it earlier in the spring and laid it aside to read several other books.

Quite possibly I shall next read "A Wrinkle in Time". That will be a stretch for me, as I really do not enjoy fantasy. Although, I do very much love the non-fiction writings of fantasy writers.

My 10 cent copy of "A Circle of Quiet" continued to fall apart as read it. I will be on the look-out for a nicer copy. This one should make great decoupage paper. It is nicely yellowed.

I enjoyed nearly every word in this book, but this stood out to me:

"Far too many people misunderstand what 'putting away childish things' means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year=old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grownup, then I don't ever want to be one."

"Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and be fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup. I still have a long way to go."

Ummm. Me too.

Until then, I shall be jotting down notes on the journey to grownupness. I think I'll titled it, "A Parallelogram of Pathos", because 'the journey to grownupness' sounds bulky.

Or something.

Poor People Fun

If this picture posts, you will see what I found while thrift shopping today.

A lovely round floral print. It's exactly what I wanted in this corner.

If it doesn't post, you will have to take my word for it.

I paid $2.60.

Last night I finally finished Anne Bronte's "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall".

Such a good book! I highly recommend it.

I feel sort of sad now. I will miss everybody. We'd been together since Traverse City.

Sleepy Monday

Tonight I plan to finish reading Madeleine L'Engle's book "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art". I have enjoyed it immensely. This is at the very least the third time I have read it, and each time I seem to pull out something entirely different than I did with past readings. For this reason I just cannot understand how someone can only read a book once. This time I have dog-eared many pages and have found a few thoughts that I would like to commit to memory. Although, in the past few years I've begun to wonder just how useful THAT idea will be.

Jonge and Famke came today. Yesterday's celebrating wore the two of them out, as it did me. Jonge slept for four hours. Famke and I slept for two. When she was awake, all she wanted to do was snuggle deeply. Oh, we played some, but snuggling was by far her activity of choice for the day. Not hard to get me to comply with that request!

Youngest Son brought a book with him yesterday and forget to leave with it. It was nice to have a book within reach today. He dropped by tonight to pick it up, but I've requested a chance to finish it. It is "Surprised by Hope" by N. T. Wright. This one, so far, is a much easier read than his "Jesus and the Victory of God". I had to re-read each paragraph of that book several times to grasp the meaning, and I'm not sure I did all that well with comprehension.

Oh. I also read "Snuggle Puppy" several times, to Famke.

Jonge had a scary thing happen to him at his house on Saturday. He came face to face with a deer at their living room window. He ran to his mommy right away, and she was able to see the tracks - right up to their house. The retelling of this story by Jonge is precious. It involves much screaming, a big hug is always necessary, and then we must put out our hand and tell the deer "BACK!" in a strong and firm voice. The story ends with Jonge saying "No deer in the house! NO!".

If I notice any more mice (three, to date) I plan to try this out on them.

Three Months from Today I Will Be Fifty.

"I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred." - Thomas A. Edison

What I Am Reading

From Madeleine L'Engle's "Love Letters":

"Supposing," she said, slowly, "you were sitting in a train standing still in a great railroad station. And supposing the train on the track next to yours began to move. It would seem to you that it was your train that was moving, and in the opposite direction. The only way you could tell about yourself, which way you were going, or even if you were going anywhere at all, would be to find a point of reference, something standing still, perhaps a person on the next platform; and in relation to this person you could judge your own direction and motion. The person standing still on the platform wouldn't be telling you where you were going or what was happening, but without him you wouldn't know. You don't need to yell out the train window and ask directions. All you need to do is see your point of reference."

A Woman of Letters

One of my favorite books is a collection of speeches titled "Lend Me Your Ears". What I love is that it contains the ENTIRE speech, not just the commonly known sections. We think we know the speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. made, but there is so much more to it. And it is fabulous. I love it.

Hello. My name is Judy, and I am a book junky.

(hello, judy.)

So, imagine my surprise today when I found this 1940's copy of "The World's Great Letters". THGGM approved of it also. Well, maybe not the book, but the price didn't cause him any panic.

I have been carrying an index card in my purse for years. It's a list of books I am looking for. Some of them I have found, but when I found them I could not afford them. Others, I cannot even remember why it was I wanted them. But, I continue to carry the list, because, well, you never know.

These are those books:

"The Awakened Heart", by Gerald May

"Radical Optimism", by Beatrice Bruteau

"The Angel that Troubled the Waters & Other Plays", by Thornton Wilder

"Letters to a Young Poet", by Rainer Maria Rilke (this one i found, but didn't have the money. but hey! now that i think of it, i still have a barnes and noble gift card...)

"Diary of a Country Priest", by George Bernanos

I had some Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen on the list, but I found those.

And. the worn out wrinkly old index card goes back into my purse for another day...

This quote is from George Bernanos:

"The horrors which we have seen, and the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable people are increasing in number thoughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile people."

And, from Rainer Maria Rilke:

"Turn therefore from the common themes to those which your everyday life affords; depict your sorrows and desires, your passing thoughts and belief in some kind of beauty - depict all that with heartfelt, quiet, humble sincerity and use to express yourself the things that surround you."

Oh, yes. I want their books.