Jenny's Jottings

"It is often much harder to get rid of books than it is to acquire them. They stick to us in that pact of need and oblivion we make with them, witnesses to a moment in our lives we will never see again. . . The truth is that in the end, the size of a library does matter. We lay the books out for inspection like a huge exposed brain, offering miserable excuses and feigned modesty. . . There is a moment, however, when we have accumulated so many books that they cross an invisible line, and what was once a sense of pride becomes a burden, because from now on space will always be a problem." from Carlos Maria Dominguez's The House of Paper

"I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself." --Eudora Welty

A room without books is like a body without a soul. - Cicero

For him that stealeth a book from this library, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck by palsy & all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy & let there be no surcease for his agony until he sink to dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the worm that dieth not, & when at last he goeth to his final punishment let the flames of hell consume him for ever & aye. ---A medieval curse from monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona (attributed)

"If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them - peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances." - Winston Churchill

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." -Mark Twain

"Sir, the fact that a book is in the public library brings no comfort. Books are one element in which I am personally and nakedly acquisitive. If it weren't for the law I would steal them. If it weren't for my purse I would buy them." - Harold Laski

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." - Desiderius Erasmus

"There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read." - G.K. Chesterton

"Someone who spent his life living rough under the sky knew the value of a good thick book, which ought to outlast at least a season of cooking fires if you were careful how you tore the pages out. Many a life had been saved on a snowy night by a handful of sodden kindling and a really dry book. If you felt like a smoke and couldn't find a pipe, a book was your man every time. Cohen realized people wrote things in books. It had always seemed to him to be a frivolous waste of paper." - Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic, p 137

Today we went up to Kim and Gale's to do laundry and to meet their new kittens, Gracie and George. Gracie is a grey stripey, and George is an dark oranged stripey. They are both so adorable. We forgot to take a camera up so we could take pictures of them to share, but we'll try to remember next time.

Last night my brother called me up with sad news. Our cat, Avagadro Phogg (we called him Foggy), had passed away yesterday and Jeff had found him. We think he was about 16 year old. He came to us when I was in high school and living in Burt, IA. We looked out the window one day and saw him rolling in the snow. We named him Phogg after the Carl Sandburg poem Fog which begins "The fog comes on little cat feet." I didn't have lots of friends in high school, so I really felt he was one of my best friends. We made up lots of songs and jokes and stories and nicknames for him, so he seemed to be much more than a cat. When I lived at home, at night he would sometime curl up to sleep on me across my pelvic area, so I would call him my chastity cat. He was gray and stripey and white. His feet were white like spats, and he had a little gray freckle on one toe of his left rear foot. I knew this day would come sometime, but I never wanted it to. I've felt bad because I haven't been as close to Phogg since I left home, and I haven't seen him since Christmas 2004. He was grumpy that visit, so it wasn't like old times.

I only have two pictures of him online. We got a scanner from a friend this weekend, but we haven't gotten it to work yet. Once we do, I have a lot of pictures I want to scan and put on Flickr.

( Pictures of Phogg )

I will miss him a lot, but I have other kitties to love now, too. I feel sad for Mom, Jeff, and Christy, who have had more recent and frequent contact with him.

It's odd, but I am much sadder about Phogg's death, than I am about the recent news, that my biological maternal grandfather, Merlin Millsap, had died this month. I never met him. He left when my mom was about 2 years old. I've only seen one picture of him. That man would have been a stranger to me, but Phogg was a close personal friend and family member.

In other news, I'm reading a lot and seeing some great movies. We rent a lot of DVDs (from one of those online ones). I've been looking forward to seeing MirrorMask and Howl's Moving Castle, and I enjoyed them both (and recommend them!). I've been reading Life of Pi by Yann Martel and Tanya Huff's Long Hot Summoning in the Keeper's Chronicles and Blood Trail in the Blood Series. I just finished up a book of short fiction by Carol Emshwiller called I Live With You.

Let's see . . .

I got us as far as the Field Museum last time. While there we saw exhibits on Egypt and mummies, modern Africa, Mexican pottery, insects, Native Americans, and dinosaurs. We ate lunch in the museum, too.

Mid-afternoon we continued up Lake Shore Drive by downtown Chicago and on into Evanston. I lived in Evanston while I was in fifth through seventh grade while my mom was in seminary at G-ETS. We drove by the apartment we lived on at 540 Michigan Ave. There was actually parking available, so we got out to take a closer look. The apartments are no longer owned by the seminary, but they look about the same, perhaps with more security features, like a locked gate across the back stairways. We talked to an elderly man from the building next door. He wondered if we lived in the building or knew who had spray painted the sidewalk between the building. I told him I'd lived there in the mid to late 80s. He said he'd lived there since the 60s. I wonder if he is the same old man who yelled at us once when we were playing to be quiet so his grandchildren could sleep? His building had new back steps/balconies. The alley was much the same, and the parks are still there. We walked through them and saw the new playground equipment. The big field is still there, the one that they would flood each winter for a skating rink. We walked around the block.

We also drove past the schools I attended while we lived there. I attended most of fifth grade at Lincoln Elementary School and sixth and seventh grades at Nichols Middle School. We drove by the church we attended in Evanston (my mom did her field ed. there): Emmanuel UMC. We also drove by G-ETS. On the way out of town we drove by the beautiful Baha'i House of Worship. We finally (after bad directions and road construction) found our motel in Glenview and ate dinner at a nearby T.G.I. Fridays. We spent a quiet evening reading. Molly was reading the latest Harry Potter. I've been reading Anne Lamott's Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith (I have very much enjoyed her previous work, including Traveling Mercies) and Charles de Lint's Waifs and Strays and Blue Girl. Yep, I'm one of those types who reads more than one book at a time!

Hopefully, I finish the rest of the trip report in my next entry. Until then . . . peace :)