Letters to you

Meme by way of rainbow

To put this in social context, the timeframe is the mid-1950s:

The World We Live In - (a large, beautifully illustrated book put out by Life Magazine based on a series they'd published in the magazine).

The Golden Book of Astronomy

The Golden Book of Science

The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments -- So ok. I didn't really *have* this one, but I found it while searching for the others and found out it was banned from libraries. So I downloaded a PDF of it immediately (available at the above link). I'm not intending to try any of it - I just want to own a banned kid's book.

The first five Noddy books by Enid Blyton - a series of stories about a wooden doll who comes to life and lives in Toyland.

The Secret Garden by Frances Burnett - the story of how a secret garden transformed the lives of three people.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - the story of Jo the original tomboy and her three sisters.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling - The story of a boy raised by wolves, a bear, a panther, and a snake.

Mary Mouse by Enid Blyton (all of them) - The story of a mouse who is nanny to three spoiled rotten children. She always got the whole family (including the parents) to behave themselves, somehow.

Everything by Beatrix Potter that I could get my hands on - Stories whose main characters were mice and rabbits, cats and dogs, frogs and toads, squirrels and foxes...

The Little Pond in the Woods

Tales of King Arthur -- I have not been able to find this book. I wish I could. It was a large book with an ornate cover, and color plates of knights and ladies, kings and queens, wizards and goblins and the ladies of the lake. It was gorgeous...

Everybody's Favorite Songs -- No clue who published it. All I remember is that it was a falling-apart, large green softback sheet music book circa 1959.

Water Birds - a children's book on various types of water birds. Beautiful illustrations. Have no idea who wrote it or who published it.

The little engine that could.

A wrinkle in time by Madeleine L'Engle (the edition at this link was the one I first read) - the story of a girl and her brother and their travels through spacetime to rescue their father.

Including comics here too:

All the Casper the Friendly Ghost comics - Casper was the best. He could walk through walls (still practicing - haven't quite gotten it yet).

All the Wendy the Good little Witch comics. She knew all about spells and what plants did what...

All the Nancy comics that had Oona Goosepimple in them -- Oona Goosepimple lived in the haunted house down the street. There was an armchair who smoked cigars, and a fireplace that went into another realm...

Spooky the Tuff little Ghost - the tough counterpart of Casper from the wrong side of the tracks.

(Can you see a pattern here?)

I ran across the Good Neighbors: Kin graphic novel by Holly Black last night. It interested me enough to read it in one sitting (actually standing - I took it off the shelf and finished it right there). I ended up buying it since I'd, well, read it. I'll admit to being in favor of Aubrey... but still -- looking forward to the rest of the series...

It was especially amusing that the four friends introduced in the beginning meet weekly for a little urban exploration photography...

A new bookstore has come to my attention.

Ukazoo Books
730 Dulaney Valley Road in Towson, Maryland
Monday-Thursday 9am–9pm
Friday and Saturday 9am–10pm
Sunday from 11am–8pm.

Over a million titles, comfortable reading room, wi-fi, cheaper than ebay, Amazon, Borders or B&N

I have lost many of the people who raised me.

Travel well, Arthur C. Clarke.

Yes, I know this is like saying "sand found at beach," but I didn't recognize this one. It's called, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to know -- and Doesn't" by Stephen Prothero.

It instructs people in the basics of the major world religions. If it's yours, it's here next time you're over.

I just ordered 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" and put the rest on "save for later".

Heh. So 6 years later, I have joined a bandwagon that's already gone (typical).

Part of it is that my mom loved those stories and kept telling me I should read them but I never did. And it's her birthday next month. and such.

Yeh, kind of hard week in that respect.

Work became crazy. They fired another guy (for incompetence) and gave me all his tasks (which were due last year). I actually love those kinds of challenges because, well, miracles and all that. So I am in the process of producing miracles for them.

I figured maybe one of Snape's incantations might help...

I found it! There was a science fiction story I'd read very long ago that had affected me profoundly (I'd identified with one of the characters), but I'd forgotten the title of the story and the author. This makes it a bit difficult to find a book. I only knew the names of three of the characters, "Dua, Tritt, and Odeen". I'd searched on these names some time ago (probably years ago), but got no hits. Just now, I remembered to do another search on those names, and this time there were hits and I found the book. Dua, Tritt, Odeen, and their strange world appear in Part Two of Isaac Asimov's three-part book, "The Gods Themselves". FOUND IT!! It's on its way home...

Yesterday at the bookstore I found another short story I'd lost track of called "Mimsy Were the Borogroves" by Lewis Padgett.

These are both stories that I read long time ago, but I still remember them like vivid, wonderful dreams. I call these kinds of stories my "spirit stories".

One by one, I'm finding these stories that struck that kind of chord...

I've always been a fan of Arthurian mythology, so I bought a book last night called Merlin and Wales: a Magicians Landscape. It's written from the perspective of someone who has researched several versions of the Arthurian legends and also probably studied quite a bit of general mythology seen through Jungian-colored glasses...

Anyway, I finally reached an excerpt that just caused me to go... "I need to set this book down for a while and rest my brain". I thought I'd share the excerpt:

"Word-head

The fifteenth-century poet Rhys Goch Eryri says that Emrys's head was concealed in the Coed Ffaraon (Pharaoh's Wood) at Dinas Emrys. In Celtic belief, a magic head, whether carved in stone or in words, stood for the whole immortal being. Therefore if Emrys's head was hidden in the wood, so was he all, just as the burial of the god Bran's head under the White Hill made Londone the capital, just as the Queen's head on a Welsh postage stam implies her whole body and that of Britannia. In a sense, the Dinas Emrys hill is the head beneath its forest hat. Similarly, on a smaller scale, Emrys's head is the buried cauldron, seen as a gilded version of King Vortigern's helmet, abandoned as he fled. Inverted, it changes from a symbol of war, to the crucible of peace.

Such radical transformations, both of scale and purpose, are to be expected on Dinas Emrys, where rival attitudes contend, yet search for reconcilliation. Consequently, Emrys's dinas holds mixed metaphors. Oak and ash trees still run their tangled roots like pubic hair over its mound of Venus, beneath which Emrys lies in hiding. He is our sovereign foetus, destined to re-emerge as an alternative to the warrior-hero norm. Under the tree is a hill and under the hill is a cave and in the cave is a pot and in the pot is a head and in the head is a mouth and in the mouth is a tongue and on the tongue is a word, ready to reinaugurate divine reality by means of the inspired spirit or awen (muse)."

Wow. I'm not sure whether or not my knowledge actually increased, but I'm pretty sure I just built an entire army of new synapses.

1/11 has been declared Kallisti day. Other people surely called it something else. Disagreements no doubt ensued. Eris stood by, and rolled a golden apple to someone.

For anyone who, for some unknown reason, likes zombies:

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

I was just advised by a fellow snake owner to try feeding my baby snakes mouse heads instead of mouse butts, since sometimes they like those better. The fact that they might want braiiinsss reminded me of World War Z. They have it on audio as well, in case someone is planning a long road trip...