January 3, 2010 - Palindrome Day
This morning someone mentioned that yesterday’s date was a palindrome. 01/02/2010. I’m sorry I missed knowing that yesterday! Such days are rare: The next one won't be untill 11/02/2011. (Mark your calendars!)
A palindrome is a word (or number) that can be read the same way backwards and forwards. It comes from two Greek words, palin (again or backward) and dromos (run or running)
So a palindrome runs backward and forward.
As a word person I love palindromes. When I was a kid we used to make them up with my dad, ranging from the simple names like NAN and OTTO to those immortal words spoken by the first man on earth to the first woman in the Garden of Eden: “MADAM I'M ADAM.”
Can you think of any palindromes? E-mail them to me and I’ll post them on November 2, 2011, the next Palindrome Day.
January 2, 2010 Kindness
To be able to look backward and say, “This, this has been the finest year of my life!” – That is glorious! But anticipation! To be able to look ahead and say, “The present year can and shall be better!” That is more glorious! If we said such things about our achievements, we would be consummate egotists. But if we are speaking of God’s kindness, and we speak truly, we are but grateful. (Thank you Frank Laubach)
Kindness: the quality of being warmhearted and considerate and humane and sympathetic.
We usually think of kindness as a rather mild word. Hardly a compliment to apply to God, the mighty creator of the universe!
But as we come to the end of this Christmas season, and I begin to pull out the boxes to put away lights and decorations I’m thinking of how our great God became a human being. “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.”
God allowed himself to be born in the flesh. For thirty three years he experienced firsthand interaction with people. He personally experienced the emotions we feel. He personally experienced rudeness and he personally experienced kindness.
Sometimes the kind things I do are overlooked. I let someone have the right of way, or go first when it’s “my turn.” I love it when we make eye contact and they smile and say thank you. It make me feel rather crestfallen when they just take it without a backward glance, without acknowledging my kindness.
I often thank God for the wonderful, amazing and great things he has done and continues to do. But this year I want to remember to also thank him for his kindness. He brings hundreds of bright little blessings into my life every day, and I just take them without an upward glance.
When I look at the fog outside my window, I often remember to thank God for his great blessings - my warm safe home and healthy family. But this morning I also thank him for his kindness in making the fog so mystic and swirly and beautiful. And I will thank him for the kindness he has shown in making this coffee taste so good.
January 1, 2010 - A New Year Thought
This seems like a wonderfully thought provoking idea to think about on this first day of the new year! Thank you William A. Quale (1860 – 1925)
Hours and minutes are man’s inventions. Weeks and days and nights and the month and the year are God’s inventions. A seventh day for rest, God said; and the week was put in the calendar. One daylight and one dark; and the day was created. One advent and exit of the silvery moon; and the month was included in its silvery circuit. The planet’s panting journey around the sun; and the year became a terrestrial and celestial fact. Twelve comings and goings of the moon, with a few days excess thrown in for good measure, as is customary with God; and God’s calendar is an accomplished lovliness!
December 31, 2009 - Things Left in Books
There are three old black and white photographs and a utility bill from the city of Pleasanton. (January of 1981 for $31.27) There are also 43 “official” bookmarks. I have this pile of things I collected in 2009. Things left in books. I buy boxes of books from estate sales, and it always interests me to see what people have tucked into books and forgotten. There is a 1982 map of The University of California at Berkeley, a little tract from 1976 (Knowing God Personally), a birthday card, a fortune from a fortune cookie, a cigarette quiz booklet published by the American Heart Association in 1967, and most amazingly 3 twenty-dollar travelers’ checks from 1964.
Did the man with the traveler’s checks get his money back? Did anyone miss any of this stuff?
Today, as we close 2009 I want to take some quiet time to flip through The Book of My Year and see if there is anything important that I have forgotten. Is there any trash I need to get rid of? Are there any pages I need to reread? I marked certain pages for some reason…
It’s a good day to look over 2009. Tomorrow we begin Volume 2010!
December 30, 2009 - Faraway Places
A song on the radio captured my heart when I was a young girl, and I will probably talk about it again in future blog writing because it has always given me such a sense of sensucht.
I think it was Bing Crosby who sang
“Those faraway places with the strange sounding names,
far away over the sea.
Those far away places with the strange sounding names
are callin’, callin’ me.
I’m going to China, or maybe Siam.
I wanna see for myself,
those faraway places I’ve been reading about
in a book that I took from a shelf."
In a twist to that old song, the books that I took from a shelf in 2009 have gone to faraway places. And I love to try to imagine where they are going!
As the year ends I tally up which states bought the most and the fewest books. Which book went to the most “far away place” and which stayed closest to home.
Californians usually buy more books than any other state, and that’s probably because many internet shoppers choose merchant in the interest of speedy delivery.
Speaking of speedy delivery, this year I got to hand-deliver two books to customers in my own town within hours of receiving their orders. That was fun.
I would have loved to personally deliver the three orders that went to Japan. I could have popped in to say hello and have a cup of coffee with my book-loving friend Geigy in Tokyo.
I did go to Italy this year… but none of my books did.
In 2009 Canadians ordered a lot of books from One More Chapter, followed closely by Australia. Near and far. I thought Australia was about as far away as you can get, but looking at a world globe, I think Madagascar is the most faraway place from my home. I’ve never sent a book to Madagascar, but I have sent two to South Africa, which is only an inch closer.
The world is getting smaller! I sent books to Belgium, Canada, Cypress, England, Finland, France and Germany…and so on. The internet has made it easy to search the world and find a book you’ve been looking for. Fifteen years ago I desperately wanted a certain out-of-print book I remembered from my youth. We searched high and low in every book store in every town we visited. I even called book stores long-distance and asked them to keep their eyes open for it. I enjoyed the challenge, and we had such a sense of delighted victory when John finally found it in a dusty little shop in Berkeley! That book is easily available now from sellers around the world, but I do miss the wonderful dusty little bookshops.
This year One More Chapter sent books to every single state in the USA. (Thank you!) New York was a strong second after California. And North Dakota and Rhode Island each ordered three books. Alaska came in last with only two sales. You will remember yesterday that one of the books I sent to Alaska was “Slow Down the Pace” (I hope you folks up there don’t slow it down any more!)
December 28, 2009 - Real Orders from One More Chapter
This week after Christmas is a week of tying up loose ends as the year comes to a close. In addition to keeping track of sales and costs and taxes, I always write down facts and statistics related that reflect the fun side of my business. Today, to start your week off with a smile, I want to talk about some of the most interesting and sometimes funniest sales of the year! All of the following are real orders from One More Chapter!
Father Paul Grosleau purchased “A Morbid Taste for Bones: The First Brother Cadfael Chronicle”
"Slow Down the Pace" was ordered by someone in Anchorage Alaska. (I don't picture Alaska as having a very fast paced life-style...)
"Presumed Innocent" was sent to an inmate At Weber County Jail
“A Rage For Justice” purchased by Mr. Glen Golightly
“The Official Guide to Country Music” was mailed to France
“A Speeder’s Guide to Avoiding Speeding Tickets” ordered by “Big Buddy Mel”
“Urinary Incontinence Sourcebook” was ordered with Expedited Shipping
December 25 - Merry Christmas!
Spend some part of your holiday curled up with a good book!
December 24, 2009 - Christmas Card Prayers
I always stick our Christmas cards up on the dining room wall with sticky-tac or poster putty. One Christmas season about twenty years ago John was looking at them and he noticed one he hadn’t seen yet. “I didn’t know we got a card from these guys!” He was so happy to see the card, and began to wander along the wall, looking at other cards. We realized he had missed several Christmas greetings. How sad!
So a new Paladini tradition was birthed.
When the Christmas cards come in the mail I don’t open them, but save them till dinnertime, and set them by each plate as I set the table. I go “clockwise” around the table, divvying them out. Some days we only get a couple in the mail, but at the height of the Christmas season we might have 2 or 3 each. After dinner we stay at the table, and take turns opening our cards and reading them aloud. We pass around enclosed pictures and read the enclosed newsletters.
And then whoever opened that card prays aloud for the person or family who sent it to us.
We have found that it’s a sweet way to stay connected as a family - and it's a sweet way to stay connected to our extended family and friends.
On this Christmas Eve, may you be filled with all the joy and blessings those Christmas cards proclaim!
December 23, 2009 - The Fake Tree Burl
Yesterday I told you about our Christmas Tree Burl ornaments.
Well, all was going along very nicely for the first 16 years…and then we got a fake tree. It was a beautiful “real-looking” tree, and it was a good decision financially and sinancilly. (Suddenly David and John had clear sinuses in December!) But what would we do for a Christmas tree burl? Well, a fake tree deserves a fake burl, we reaasoned, so we applied the scroll saw to plywood, and came up with a perfect burl shape – a round circle.
The following year, as David and Monica were putting the tree together they had a brain storm. They realized that if they reversed the assembly directions they could build our Christmas tree upside down. “Please mom,” they begged, “It will be a like a geometry lesson!” How could this home-schooling mother resist that kind of reasoning? Besides, it had been a rather upside down year for our family. John had recently lost his job and we were not sure what was in store for us.
The upside-down tree was a great conversation piece, and it was beautiful! Everyone commented that the ornaments hung much more nicely than on a regular tree. We loved it! The crowning touch was that the kids even brought in a log from our firewood pile, to stick up from the top (er…bottom) of the tree.
After Christmas John cut the tree-topper log into eight identical burls, which we have used each year since. We hung the last one this year, and when we added it the chain touched the floor. Burls from ceiling to floor on both side of the doorway…where do we go from here?
December 22, 2009 - Traditions
Christmas is three days away! I love it. I love the lights and the music and the good will and the traditions.
I really love traditions!
Please "Contact Us" and tell me about any your family has!
Our family has traditions for every season - and almost every day. Some of them are weird and silly, but they’re all fun, and they draw us close as a family. That’s what traditions are all about. Sometimes I think I’ll write a book about them. Friends have suggested that to me more than once. (Maybe this blog will evolve into a book like Julie’s did! Random House, are you out there?)
I’m kicking myself now becasue I didn’t think about taking a little time each day in December to write about what we do at Christmas. But then, in December most people are probably too busy to even be reading blogs. I know I am.
However, for NEXT Christmas and for posterity and for practice, here goes!
Tradition #1- Our Christmas Tree Burl
The first year John and I were married I think I got this idea from a Mother Earth Magazine, and we’ve done it every year since. John slices a circle from the trunk of our Christmas tree when he levels it to put in the stand. (A smooth flat little circle – we call it a burl. But I don’t know if that is actually what it’s called.) I glue a picture from that Christmas on each flat side of the circle. Then we screw an O-ring in the top and bottom. We’ve connected the burls with swivels and we hang them up as a decoration. Now, after twenty-five years of marriage, we have a long chain of Christmas burls. It’s always the first decoration I put up to herald the Christmas season. Hanging down the two sides of a doorway in our home, the circles range from two inches in diameter to the size of a dessert plate. The two inch burl has a picture of chubby cheeked toddlers, reminding us of of the reason we had such a tiny tree set high on a table. The one with the biggest diameter pictures the mighty hunter children who went in search of “…the tallest tree we can find – one that touches the ceiling!” One of the pictures shows our oldest son, Matthew cutting down the pine tree that grew too big for our front yard. And the burl is from that very tree.
Tomorrow I will write about our transition to an artificial tree…
December 21 - One More New Chapter
For at least a month now everyone has been telling me I have to see Julie and Julia (“You’ll love it! You love to write and you love to cook!”)
So John and I finally watched it last night, and sure enough, I loved it!
But I was so convicted about how faithful Julie was in writing on her blog! I realized it has been a whole month (to the day) since I write on mine! I started this so I could get in the habit of writing, beyond what I write in my personal journal.
I’m always thinking. I’m one of those people whose mind never stops. High thoughts…silly thoughts…what ifs…
But I’m beginning to realize that my body also never stops. At least it doesn’t stop often enough. I stay too busy. I am determined to slow down and take the time to write something every day. It’s my new chapter. One More Chapter
November 21, 2009 Who is Jane Jardscg?
Who is Jane Jardscg? A few years ago our Lala Book Group decided to combine our various writing talents and embark on a novel enterprise! We spent the better part of one of our meetings making plans for writing our book. We would need a nom de plume, and the obvious choice was “Jane.” (Jane Eyre…Jane Austen...Jane Doe…)
We combined each of our first initials to give Jane a last name. Jardscg.
At this point I should introduce you to the Lalas, who are pictured at the bottom of my home page. We are all happily married with mostly grown children. Left to right they are: Geigy who is a missionary in Japan. She is the only one of us who has young children. Denise works with finances in an office. Robyn is a church secretary. Jennifer just completed college and is an RN. Sally is back in college and works at a school. Andrena has a bookselling business. Colleen is elementary school teacher.
Our novel would take seven months to write, and coincidentally enough, there were seven women in the group! We would each write our chapter anonymously. We put seven slips of paper in a basket, and drew lots to choose our month for writing, and the first author began chapter one that very month.
Our method of passing the manuscript was very cloak and dagger! At our next meeting, a manila envelope was covertly placed on the kitchen counter of the house where we were meeting. It contained a copy of the manuscript for each of us.
Then author Number Two wrote her chapter, moving the story along. And so it continued for seven months. Then we had our unveiling meeting. We sat around the kitchen table and each of us tried to guess, and finally admitted, who had written which chapter. We laughed at the plot holes and time warps, and agreed that Jane Jardscg has multiple personality disorders!
So now I invite you, dear reader, to follow me into the world of Jane Jardscg. In the coming days and weeks her novel will be serialized on this very web site! You too will have the opportunity to guess which of the Lalas wrote which chapter!
November 11, 2009 - BUTTER NIGHT!
All three of our children have grown up to be bookworms and I think part of the reason is that they grew up without television. Reading was our main family entertainment.
But this is not to say that they didn’t enjoy TV, and make the most of it whenever we visited friends or relatives. In fact, I remember catching myself staring in amazement at a commercial with dancing raisins! I couldn’t believe how fascinated I was by that commercial! I remember thinking that it was as much for my own good as for my children that we didn’t have a TV. How easy it would be for me to get sucked into watching things I didn’t really care about!
Then the early eighties brought the VCR, and the whole new concept of being able to choose what to watch on a television set. Video stores began to pop up around town. Our firm resolve was a little shaken. Now if we had a television set we could actually make a choice about what to watch instead of just turning on the least objectionable program from a handful of networks.
And then, inevitably, one fine autumn day, someone gave us an old television set. I insisted that we keep it in our garage, and lug it into the house each rare time we decided to watch a movie. In those days, you could even rent a VCR player at the video stores, so the stage was set – “Mom, we can go to the video store and get some movies and rent a VCR and it would be so much fun to sit and watch movies!”
It seemed as if the Paladini family was poised on the brink of the world of high technology! Oh how I resisted! I wanted my children to keep their love of reading. I wanted them to love old fashioned values…
Old fashioned! I had a brain storm!
We could make butter for our Thanksgiving dinner! We would shake cream in quart jars just like the first Pilgrims did. That way my children would learn the wonderful lesson of how cream turns into butter. And we could enjoy a movie at the same time. (“And not be wasting time sitting vacantly in front of the boob tube!” I added self-righteously to myself.)
Thus was born Butter Night!
Butter Night has become a Thanksgiving family tradition. Year after year we choose a movie and pour heavy whipping cream into quart jars. (The jars should be about one third full.) Then we turn on the movie and shake and shake and shake. There comes a point when the cream has become whipped and is hard to shake. Persevere through this stage and you will suddenly hear a “thunk” and a “slosh.” And you’ll have a chunk of solid butter bumping around in thin sweet buttermilk. (This is not the sour cultured kind of buttermilk you buy at the store.)
At this point we pause the movie and take our jars into the kitchen. We pour the buttermilk back into the original cream cartons to drink later, and plop the chunks of butter into a big bowl of ice water in the kitchen sink. It’s “dad’s job” to squeeze the butter with his hands to get all the milk out. We have to change the water a couple of times until it remains clear. Then we sprinkle salt on the butter and mix it in. Even after 21 years we ask ourselves, “How much salt do we use?” Everyone has to taste it to see if it’s salty enough. David’s “special job” is to put the washed and salted butter into a smaller bowl and carry it over to the counter. He takes his job very seriously, and even now he carries bitterness in his heart because I got rid of his traditional red Tupperware butter-carrying bowl! (Never mind that it had a big melted gouge on one side on the rim – it was his traditional butter-bowl!)
Then we go back to our movie, and as the movie progresses I press butter into little heart shaped molds to make butter patties we take “over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house” for our contribution to Thanksgiving dinner!
The family loves the butter, and looks they dutifully assure us that home-made butter is so much better than store-bought.
I’m not sure about that, but it has become a tradition we love.
I was surprised a couple of years ago when Monica got upset because we had Butter Night without her. She was away at college in Virginia, and would not get home until just a couple of days before Thanksgiving. I didn’t realize how much of a family-bonding experience it had become!
So now, as Thanksgiving approaches, Monica has graduated from college. David is married and he’ll be bringing his wife, Amanda. We’re all looking at our work and school schedules and trying to figure out what night will work for us all to get together for “Butter Night.”
The suggestions of what movie we will watch have evolved quite a bit, though. They probably will not sit still for “The Ewok’s Adventure.”
November 7, 2009 – To Read, Reread or Toss? That is the Question!
I’m looking at my TBR shelf again, loaded up with so many books To Be Read. Books I really want to read! Recommended by people I know, whose taste in reading I respect, or authors who have already captured my heart.
But I have taken some of the weight off my TBR shelf in recent years. Because beside my reading chair is a growing stack of partially read books. They range from Lord Vanity (1953 historical fiction by Samuel Shellabarger) to The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.
I’ve surprised myself by becoming one of those people who read several books at the same time. I have always been like Belle, walking down the street with my nose stuck in a book, absorbed and oblivious to anything else in the world until I got to the end of that book.
Now, when I sit down to read, I sort through my stack with a mental finger to the wind. (Admittedly, some of those books have been by my chair for a long time, and after I avoid them long enough I realize they are not going To Be Read! And we say a painless goodbye.
I don’t remember ever reading a book that I didn’t enjoy. I’m sure I’ve never labored through a book I hated. (Except a few textbooks in school) And I’ve never had any qualms about setting a book aside if it didn’t draw me in pretty quickly! My friend, and Pastor, Steve Madsen says he will give a book THREE chapters…and I think that’s a pretty good rule of thumb. Three chapters or maybe 40 pages…and then, life’s too short! Toss it!
My friend Lynne said she has only recently come to the place where she can put aside a book without finishing it. She said “I used to think I HAD TO READ A BOOK TO ITS CONCLUSION...no matter how bad. No longer believe that!”
Mandi, who is much younger than Lynne and I says “I HAVE to read the book to the end no matter how bad it is. It drives Craig [her husband] crazy if I'm reading a horrible book, because I complain the whole time! But I can't stop. I don’t see this changing for me.”
I’ll give Mandi another five or ten years, and then she’ll be right there with Lynne and Steve and me. According to Tee-shirt wisdom, “So many books, so little time…”
An Italian proverb says, “There is no worse robber than a bad book." I don’t want to be robbed of time I could be getting into the world of a wonderful new book. But I also don’t want to be robbed of time to revisit old friends. I have read some of my favorite books three times in my life, and will probably read them again. Maybe it’s senility or a growing short-attention-span, but I’m not alone. My book-loving friend, Geigy, is much younger than I am, and she says, "Rereading a great book is like slipping into your favorite jammies along with a hot cup of cocoa - perfection in my book!”
October 30, 2009
I’m sitting in my cluttered office looking at my haphazardly filled book shelves. There are at least a thousand books. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to organize them. They stay organized for about a week. I have them more or less arranged in sections according to authors’ last names…my Daphne DuMaurier books are followed by Alexander Dumas; Dorothy Sayers is lined up carefully beside John Steinbeck and Mary Stewart… But then one of these days I want to read She Said Yes by Misty Bernal, and I probably won’t remember Misty’s last name, so that book has been laid horizontally across the top of the “S” section so I can easily see the title. Then I have a few extra copies of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” and “The Glass Castle” just because they are such great books and I just happened to find extra copies to give to friends. I can’t afford the shelf room though, so they are piled sidewise on top of books in the general area of Smith and Walls.
Someday I am going allocate a shelf for favourite give-aways – my sharing shelf. It will probably be the same time I set up my TBR shelf of books To Be Read. (Probably about the time we add a new wing to the house!) It seems to me that those would be two important shelves for a book lover’s library – a sharing shelf and a TBR shelf – since one of the best things about reading is talking about books with friends.
I have a several long-distance reading relationships: my sister Monica, and friends Geigy, Laura and Jennifer. They are all so dear to me and we talk on the phone regularly. We talk about lots of things, but every conversation includes “What are you reading?” I frantically scribble down their suggestions in my little TBR notebook.
I go hiking with Emily every week and that woman is a reading machine! I can’t keep up with her, as every week she is reading some fascinating new book that is definitely destined for my TBR shelf!
And then there are the Lalas! In June of 1995 this sweet circle of book-loving women met for the first time. With our tongue firmly in check we decide to call ourselves “The Ladies’ Literary League.” In those early years, Robyn’s young son, Zack, couldn’t get his mind and tongue around that pretentious name so he would just say, “Mom, are you going to your LALA meeting tonight?” We loved it! So we have become “The Lalas.”
Check back in future blogs and I’ll tell you about books the Lalas have read and some of the fun, book-related activities we’ve done. E-mail me and tell me about your book group, books you like and books you hate, and I’ll pass your thoughts along to my millions of faithful readers!
