There’s all of heaven and earth in a book, a real book

The title of this post just says it all, doesn’t it?  Remember to read and purchase books, and give them as gifts, often and in multiples.  I recently sent my nephew a number of books written by C.S. Lewis, including The Screwtape Letters.  And I can’t wait to see my aunt with her gift, a copy of Stephen N. Fliegel’s, A higher contemplation: sacred meaning in the Christian art of the Middle Ages.  A great read.

“When you sell a person a book you don’t just sell twelve ounce of paper and ink and glue—you sell a whole new life. Love and friendship and humor and ships at sea by night—there’s all of heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”

—Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop

Quotation from The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch

On life without books:

 “…I simply could not imagine a life without books and words and the smell of paper…”

On giving away books:

 “Love expressed through a thoughtfully chosen book lingers, along with the memory of its imparted wisdom. Giving up the physical item doesn’t sever anything. As for that beloved childhood copy of Charlotte’s Web, where do Fern and Wilbur live: on the page, or in your heart?”

Art of the hat

Stephen Jones for Christian Dior Haute Couture via The Peabody Essex Museum

Explore the delightful realm of hats – wildly plumed bonnets, silk turbans, sequined caps, embroidered crowns, Sarah Jessica Parker’s lime-green fascinator and 250 other elegant and sometimes outlandish styles.

Displayed with the wit and whimsy of British milliner-to-the-stars Stephen Jones, Hats reveals the boundless creativity of hat design and our own fascination with wearing these indescribable works of art.

The Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts

Touring exhibition organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Illuminated Garbage Bags

Reblogged from :

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For their latest intervention titled “Plastic Garbage Guarding the Museum,” Spanish performance collective Luzinterruptus created a large scale installation consisting of 5,000 colorful plastic bags filled with air, piled up in dumpsters and lit up from within. The installation was created for the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur in Switzerland and was meant to demonstrate, in a humorous way, the environmentally damaging effects of mindless consumption.

Read more… 2 more words

Delightful...

Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits

Pew – Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits

 More than eight in ten Americans between the ages of 16 and 29 read a book in the past year, and six in ten used their local public library. At the youngest end of the spectrum, high schoolers in their late teens (ages 16-17) and college-aged young adults (ages 18-24) are especially likely to have read a book or used the library in the past 12 months. And although their library usage patterns may often be influenced by the requirements of school assignments, their interest in the possibilities of mobile technology may also point the way toward opportunities of further engagement with libraries later in life.

And from NPR:

America’s Facebook Generation Is Reading Strong

The Nation’s Largest Libraries

The Nation’s Largest Libraries: A Listing By Volumes Held

The book is not dead yet…far from it.

ALA Library Fact Sheet Number 22

This fact sheet lists the top 100 largest libraries in the United States by volumes held.  The top 10 include:

Number		Library Name	Volumes Held
1		Library of Congress	34,528,818
2		Boston Public Library (Branches + Research Collections)	19,090,261
3		Harvard University	16,832,952
4		New York Public Library (Branches + Research Collections)	16,342,365
5		University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign	13,158,748
6		Yale University	12,787,962
7		University of California – Berkeley	11,545,418
8		Columbia University	11,189,036
9		University of Michigan	10,778,736
10		University of Texas – Austin	9,990,941

This is how the earth works now

Long Island’s winter of 2011-2012 brought back memories of winters long ago, when we enjoyed snowfalls of 18 inches of snow on a regular basis.  This summer reminded me of the lazy days of summer in the 1960s, days filled with heat, humidity and summer lethargy.  Apparently we should expect more variety in our weather.  “The technical word for that is, insane.”

This summer has seen record heat waves and wildfires in the U.S, the worst flooding in Beijing’s modern history, and droughts that devastated the U.S. corn crop and led India to set up “refugee camps” for livestock. These extreme events were not freak occurrences — this is how the earth works now…In fact, you could argue that the North American summer actually started two days before the official end of winter this year, when the town of Winner, South Dakota turned in a 94-degree temperature reading. It was part of that wild July-in-March heat wave that stretched across two-thirds of the country, a stretch of weather so bizarre that historian Christopher Burt called it “probably the most extraordinary anomalous heat event” that the nation has ever seen. International Falls, “the icebox of the nation,” broke its heat records 10 straight days, and Chicago nine. In Traverse City, Michigan, on March 21, the record high was 87 degrees. But the low was 62 degrees, which was 4 degrees higher than the previous record high. The technical word for that is, insane.

As reported by Yale Environment 360, a publication of the Yale School of Forestry& Environmental Studies

Also try We Need Ratings for Snowstorms and Heat Waves

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