Wit, Wisdom & Wonder

Pomegranate is doing it right, folks. Please support this vital publisher with your time and attention, your wallet if you can.

In catalog order, my recommendations for you:

The Evil Garden by Edward Gorey. I'll recommend anything by Gorey and there's a lot on offer (over two dozen books from the look of it) at the moment via Pomegranate. I single out The Evil Garden, which describes a family outting to a botanical garden featuring deadly plants, insects, snakes, etc. and in that charmingly vicious Gorey way - they all come to a poetic end. Of course!

Crow Mother and the Dog God by Meinrad Craighead, featuring essays by Rosemary Davies. Craighead is a Benedicine nun who left the order to go to America's Southwest where she learned Native American beliefs and sought to combine her belief in the Madonna with the Crow Mother. The art is really quite engrossing - worth a look and a read.

The Addams Family: An Evilution by H. Kevin Miserocchi. Based on the iconic cartoons, this book presents 200+ never before seen cartoons by artist Charles Addams. The book traces the origins and history of the cartoon, outlining in great detail each character. A MUST for most of my friends.

Taking Tea with Mackintosh: The Story of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms by Perilla Kinchin. A delightful true story featuring Kate Cranston's support of budding architect, Charles Renne Mackintosh, who in 1896 began designing tea rooms for both men AND women - shocking in that day and age. This book includes each of the tea rooms designs, from architecture to the design of the uniforms of the waitstaff, including whatever remnates remain of the actual tearooms. Also includes recipes for "traditional tea room cakes, breads and pastries". Ruth, I'm thinking you'd love this!

Special Note: Also on offer, Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Textile Designs by Roger Billcilffe. If you haven't seen these, you are missing out. Combining art, geometry and 'architexture' these designs are mesmerizing. I couldn't live with them, but I'm looking forward to looking at them.

Art Quilts: Playing with a Full Deck by Sue Pierce and Verna Suit. I can't speak highly enough of this one - just knowing it exists makes me chuckle with delight! Pierce came up with the highly original idea to ask fellow art quilters to design a unique quilt based on each card in the playing card deck, including the two jokers. From the pics offered, these are awesome, inspiring works. I would highly recommend this to any tarot fan.

Manglo-Saxon: Marvelously Mangled Meanings fo Well-Worn Words by R.S. Young. A completely new lexicon in which "words mean what the sound like and look like. Examples given: "Equator: Exclamation of finding something unexpected in restaurant food. 'Equator! There's a spider in my soup!'" & "Limpet: A sedated domestic animal. 'A simple pill turns a hysterical schnauzer into a wobbling limpet". Erynn and Alfrecht, I'm thinking these might be worth a good conversation over dinner.

Sorry for the typos, I'm trying to catch them all. I cannot type on an Apple keyboard, mea culpa!

After I get the store opened up, I sit down with the voicemail machine and write down all the messages. Quite a few are telemarketers (an important business matter to discuss with you) kind of crap, others are the bizarre half-mumbled orders left by customers.

This morning's mystery was a woman who wanted to order the children's nature book discussed on NPR this morning. *headdesk*

So I checked the websites for NPR, KUOW and KPLU. There was nothing listed about childrens books on the front pages or in the current line up, so I ran searches on the site (boy, does their search engine suck - absolutely nothing popped up for today's date and children, book & variants there of). So I called her and found out which station she was listening to (KUOW) and which show she was listening to (10am Weekday with Steve Scher). From there it took seconds to find the book - Scat by Carl Hiaasen.

Such is the life. Life is also, apparently, a very small bat that flew in this morning and is napping peacefully in the fake fig tree in the back. I'm somewhat fond of bats, so we'll let it stay awhile before I rescue him. Out back in employee parking there's a sidewalk to the basement, which is protected from the sun. There's plenty of bugs and plenty of nighttime security lights to draw the bugs. Should be a great spot. Might even give him a name!

Now that we're no longer having midnight Harry Potter releases, I've made my own fun by volunteering to design the windows for Halloween. I'd kinda hoped that would inspire the other employees to do the same, but it has not. I may sign up for more holidays, at this rate, just so something gets done with bright, colorful things to draw the interest of holiday shoppers. It breaks my heart that I'm the only one who seems to care about this little shop, but the owner is holding on by her fingernails.

Josh and Kevin, as tradition, came by the store today to help. We hung "Happy Halloween" banners across the tall bookshelves at the front of the store. In the right window we set a fogging, bubbling cauldron wreathed in autumn leaves garlands. Added a cute little electric spooky tree, complete with hanging skeletons and a green goblin. Another little cauldron with a tentacle monster coming out of it's mouth is surrounded by little witches. In the left window is the cemetery, complete with a green-faced witch and hissing cat. In the windows, we have caution signs "Goblin Crossing" and a witch on her broom with "Share the road" on it. The right window looks a bit sparse, so I'll bring in more stuff tomorrow. I'd lost track as to what decorations are at my home and which I stored here from last year, apparently.

Yes, pics to come, forgot my camera.

Apologies to everyone trying to reach me via cell, I'm covering a shift today for a co-worker at the bookstore. I'll ring everyone back Tuesday, with any luck.

I'm hacking, sneezing, sniffling and sound like I'm talking through a tunnel. One customer told me I should find a new allergist, I didn't admit I haven't been to one this century. "Yep, you've got allergies" is about all any doctor has been able to do for me before offering huge amounts of steroids. No thanks. I take Zyrtec once a day, year-round. Twice to three times a day during Hayfever seasons. That's all I can handle and still remain upright. Notice I don't say functional. This is not functional. Frankly, I'm not very vertical right now, either.

For what it's worth: It's fairly impossible to keep a customer's attention when Darwin, the store cockatiel, is busy humping his favorite toy. All day.

Dragged several more bags into the bookstore today to finish the other window. The right window at the Wind & Tide is reserved for WAIF (Whidbey Animal Improvement Foundation), so its a bit tricky to decorate it. Skeletons would not be appropriate for a shelter window. Nor would gravestones. No siree.

As it stands right now, its a mixture of Autumn and a few Halloween items. I've added my collection of nearly a dozen stuffed witches (I'm a huge fan of the game "A Witch and a Watch"), fake pumpkins, silk fall-colored leaves, Jack O'Lanterns, black cats (appropriate, no?) and cauldrons. And, of course, a lovely cornucopia filled with gords and indian corn. And, yes, Flash in his Halloween bandanna.

What I don't have is more GellyGem bats, so I'll need to get more of those. Possibly a few more signs, as well, since they are so popular.

The Island is awash in motorcycles this weekend. Literally everywhere you look are bikers in their leathers. Mostly touring bikes, but a few Harleys in the mix. Haven't seen a chopper though.

Sadly, this is not likely to translate into book sales if we go by last year's event.

Flash is somehow managing to have gas and hiccup at the same time. Its terrifying.

Sir Innocent, himself:

Today a very nice airman came into the bookstore. Thoroughly polite young man, most likely from Texas given his accent. He bought a journal for a homesick Navy friend who was depressed and wrote a beautiful sentiment on the inside cover. While I wrapped it he had a great time rubbing Flash's belly and told me about his dog, Beau. Seems the young man had a basset back in TX, but left the dog with his parents when he joined the Navy since he wasn't sure if he could take care of Beau here in Oak Harbor. I let him know Flash was there almost every Sunday, which he was happy to hear and that he was welcome to walk Flash around the block anytime he wanted to. This cheered him up considerably and when he left he told me he felt better about the whole thing and was going to look into getting his dog sent up here now that he knew it was a dog friendly town. Promised to bring Beau in to meet Flash.

In every way possible he was an incredible example of what a young man could and should be, except he insisted on calling me "Ma'm" the whole while. Yeah, I know its a cultural mannerism of the South and given my status as married woman in her *cough* mid-thirties it was meant in the deepest respect. But I twitched every single time he said it, couldn't help myself. Probably didn't help manners that not only did I bring a thermos of coffee to work, but both my husband and Deb showed up with lattes for me so I've been high on caffeine all day.

Happy New Year's from the Old Lagamorph Lady and her family to you and yours!